


By Fire, From Ash

by genegonewilder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Humor, Drama & Romance, F/M, Hate to Love, Introspection, Minor Violence, Opposites Attract, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 207,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26629888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genegonewilder/pseuds/genegonewilder
Summary: Young adult Severus is finding it difficult to adjust to life post-war, in part due to the fact that the rumors about his Death Eater status seem to have spread far and wide, but also because his own self-loathing outweighs anything anyone could throw at him. With his new teaching position at Hogwarts, he hopes to just move on, but a woman stands as a blazing reminder of his past.
Relationships: Severus Snape/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 25





	1. Warm Welcome

**Author's Note:**

> Love, loss, grief, and growth.  
> This story is told from the perspective of Severus Snape and explores his grief for the loss of Lily Potter, deals with the psychology of shifting a deeply embedded belief system, and introduces a very slow burning rivals-to-lovers romance, all of which is meant to tell a story of personal growth and healing. Also, I don't mean for it to sound like an entirely joyless experience—I do love humor as well. Partial deviations from the canon of the Harry Potter series will be made, most notably: changes to the dates of major events, and the entire character of Fawkes the phoenix.  
> 

_—***—_

* * *

The Great Hall was uncharacteristically silent. Out in the entrance hall at least there had been the friendly crackle of braziers to greet those who passed through the main door, ghosts chatting somewhere on the upper balcony, the sound of some unseen staff member's heels clicking down the hall; but here, all was quiet. No plates had yet been magically set, and the large house banners hanging from the ceiling had no wind to rustle noise from their intricate fabric. However, what stood out most in comparison to his memory of the place was the fact that there was not a soul in sight.

Severus allowed himself a brief moment to take it all in. By this time tomorrow, the students would be arriving for the first day of the 1981 Hogwarts school-year, and he would quickly find himself up to his eyeballs in essays and tests - though this time he would be the one grading them. This thought didn't incite any feelings of some grand new adventure though, nor did he feel trepidation at the necessary workload. Instead, he merely felt... apathetic. The overcast early night sky magically reflected in the ceiling seemed to mirror his impassive gaze.

His reverie was broken as an older witch wearing a rather gaudy looking fur hat come in through the side entrance. She took one look at him and, even from his position across the hall he could see, looked stricken. Her footsteps hurried up until she was at the door behind the long staff table that she - and incidentally he, as well - was headed to. It was too far a gap for her to have held open the door for him, but then again, he would not have expected her to. Feeling steeled in his blanketed emotions, he strode forward and followed suit, breaking ground on the hitherto unfamiliar corner of the school.

It was a cozy sort of parlor room with a high ceiling, though not nearly as high as the Great Hall. Here there was a handsome decoratively carved wooden ceiling and matching wall panels in place. At current, only a fireplace and a simple candlelit chandelier were providing light, and it created the perfect atmosphere for the friendly chatter carried around the room; from people in assorted sitting chairs, to booths, to those who were standing in small circles.

The crackling of the fire was suddenly very apparent as all the merry talking died down at once, and a dozen or so heads turned towards him.

He dodged glances and persons alike, making a sharp left pivot towards three identical empty chairs pushed against the wall in one corner, and sat. Poised though it was, his posture portrayed no intent to turn and make conversation, nor give any indication that he knew there were others in the room with him at all, and soon the talking resumed in a subdued whisper.

"— _couldn't be_ —" "— _surely not_ —" "— _saw him last year at_ —" "— _Slughorn has even been_ —" "— _but would Dumbledore let_ —"

He stared at a spot on the floor a few feet in front of him, where it seemed the door had left a permanent sweeping mark on the hardwood. It wasn't resentment or anxiousness that he held in with slightly pursed lips, but bitter smugness. How comforting it was when people were as predictable as they could possibly be. It took the weight off of him having to make small talk or feign interest; or answer any probing questions. All would be explained, he was sure, in a matter of moments. If only they had the good sense to realize this and hold their wagging tongues before they gave breath to their ill-mannered gossiping while their subject was clearly within earshot.

Just as he had anticipated, the door swung open. But what he saw was not the long silver beard and powerful stride of Albus Dumbledore pushing through the entrance, and any sense of calm he had been maintaining vanished from him in an instant.

A curtain of auburn hair billowed past as its owner swiftly strode into the room. She paused mid step to survey the grouping, then took up standing room in front of the fireplace, smoothly joining in the small talk. Severus's black eyes raked over her face as she angled to address her conversation partners. And then his own hair was flicked against the sides of his face as he snapped his eyes back down to the floor.

_Idiot. Moron. Bloody hopeless brain-rotted fool._ He tried to release the near-painful grip his right hand was currently inflicting on his left, but his muscles seemed too taut to allow movement just yet. He didn't need to put forth the same concentration to smooth out his facial features, as they did so automatically on his next inwardly chastising thought. _She's dead._

This time when the door swung open it was exactly who he had been waiting for, but the effect of the arrival was greatly diminished. The rest of the attendees took up the correct reaction a headmaster deserved when he walked into a room full of his staff, expressing their delight and greeting him as warmly as he greeted them. From his place across the room, in the darker side of the shadows, Severus managed to raise his eyes towards the center where the splendidly enrobed wizard stood.

The headmaster made one slow semi-circle turn, twinkling blue eyes flicking from head to head around the room, before he announced to the audience, "I do believe, that this is everyone."

"It is, Albus," came the helpful reply from McGonagall, who took a seat nearest him. Everyone else busied themselves finding their own assorted seats to give him the floor to speak.

Soon there were only two people left standing, and he realized one of them was the girl who had caused him such surprise. No, not a girl, he thought, as he evaluated the witch who stood smiling cheerfully at Dumbledore's side. She was younger than the rest of the staff, surely, but then again, so was he. He had been turned down for a position here twice due to his age, and, he greatly suspected, other matters that hadn't been said aloud in his interviews. Her face didn't spark any recognition from his own years at Hogwarts, and he was sure she couldn't have been a student. Another thought occurred to him and, with a hasty glance around the room, he realized there weren't any other teachers that he didn't at least dimly recognize. His eyes went back to the unknown witch with a growing sense of hostility.

"Now, firstly, I believe I should thank you all for coming once again," Dumbledore began, and the small crowd replied with their hearty appreciation to be back. One wizard piped up, "And what a good year to be back!" to strong applause. The reason they might have been absent was no longer an issue in any of their lives. As far as they could see, anyway.

One month to the day, and, very nearly, the hour. July 31st, 1981 had been for the whole of the wizarding world one that they would surely never forget, and, if it had not been for the considerable push-back from the Ministry, one that would have been celebrated much too loudly for regulation straight through the whole first week of August. Severus had thought by now, surely, finally, people would stop their jubilant air-headed noise. News of continued attacks by Death Eaters were still appearing in the papers, and besides, much of the damage that had been done was still set in stone; be it houses blasted to rubble, or slabs of it erected in graveyards.

He did not clap along and his stare lost a little of its focus.

"Indeed, we are blessed this year to resume our teachings with long-awaited peace," Dumbledore continued in his slow respectable tone. "Though, there is still plenty to be done, much of which I'm sure will not get nearly as much celebration despite being some of the most important work yet." At least someone was speaking sense, even if it was the old wizard. "We will, of course, still need to be alert to those around us; mindful of our students who are suffering and have suffered, and careful and guiding to those who may still feel swayed towards certain paths." The arm of his half-moon spectacles nearly obscured the small glance he cast to one shadowy corner of the room, but Severus could tell when he was being looked at. He didn't react, but his eyes did slip to another pair that was much more blatantly glancing at him, looking more nervous now that she was standing in the middle of the room with nothing to do but fold her hands over the front of her cloak. Or perhaps she was sharing Dumbledore's concerns more vividly. He kept his face impassive and looked back to the orator once more.

"Thankfully," and there was a note of happiness restored to his voice now, "we have two new additions to our faculty to help us on our mission of enlightenment." He turned to fully face the young woman now, positively beaming. She attempted to return the smile, but the sudden turn of the room's attention seemed to have startled her, and the corners of her mouth flickered up and down. "The first of whom," he laid one hand on her shoulder and her smile instantly found its strength, "Miss Freya; who will be taking up the Defense Against the Dark Arts position."

Severus's jaw twitched, and he ever so mindlessly forgot to clap along again, joining in only at the end with a few uninspired taps on his palm.

He had deduced as much already, of course, but it was still an annoyance to confirm she was the person who would be filling his preferred position, especially with Dumbledore looking like he had some pre-existing familiarity with the woman. Nepotism, perhaps? Or something more outside what he would have thought Dumbledore's scruples to be? She was, he observed with a practical eye, fine looking. Now that her title had been revealed, and he was no longer under the impression her hair was anywhere close to the correct shade of auburn he had mistaken it for at first in the low light, he looked her over with more scrutiny. She looked like she wouldn't last a single exchange of spells in a wizard's duel, at least not against himself, and she held the same air of goody-ness that Dumbledore did. Her outfit was a plain long robe of dark brown, not professional school black, but casual witch's garb. Very uninteresting. Her hair that had so caught his attention at first was long enough to be at about her waist, and even taking into account the fireplace's dancing light behind her, the orange glow to it seemed almost unnatural. Her eyes... Well, he couldn't make out much from this distance, except the sudden expression of resolve and minuscule nod that passed from her to Dumbledore before he spoke next.

"Freya, as a few of you already know," his eyes swept across the room to a select few people, including, to Severus's surprise, himself, "is an old friend of mine. And we have both agreed that if she shall be teaching here, it should be done with transparency, at least among the staff — _only_ among the staff — to ease... other aspects of life."

He was thrown by this unexpected bit of information, and the odd phrasing made his earlier conspiracies jump back into mind so that he was almost hoping it was just nepotism that was going on, as detestable as an idea it was. His eyes left Dumbledore's cryptic grinning face and searched the woman's instead for answers; most pressing being why he had been included in those who supposedly should have the slightest clue who she was, which he still did not. She was busy working out some inner conflict, eyes cast unseeing on the floor. As he watched, he saw the nerves clear away to show a more determined poise than seemed capable of her features a moment ago.

Dumbledore seemed to have been waiting for her, and he now continued in an encouraging tone. "Freya? If you would please enlighten everyone so that we can all be on the same page here?" She nodded simply, glancing to her side at her 'old friend', and then, inexplicably, to Severus himself. Their eyes met and he thought he saw something like an apology tug at her brows, her eyes gleaming with the firelight of the room, and then, impossible as it was, he knew what was about to happen a split second before it did. But it wasn't nearly enough time to prepare.

With a crack that could have been a stray spark popping from the fireplace, and a tongue of flame that was gone as quickly as it appeared, the woman was gone with it, and out burst the legendary bird Dumbledore had always kept at his side — the phoenix.

He heard, more than saw, as great wings flapped once through the air, and gasps from the surrounding staff who hadn't been privy to this information now remarked in awe.

His eyes were on his lap, short curtains of black hair falling to shield his face as his hands wrapped tightly around his elbows. But even the excited voices in the room with him couldn't keep him there, as his mind was pulled to a dark forest, lying flat on his back, bleeding into the mud, and the only sound that was ringing in his ears was his own voice begging to be left to die.

"Thank you, Albus."

Her voice was kind and warm, and it summoned him back to the present with cruel ease. He had to shut his eyes for a heartbeat, because he could not make such a noticeable disturbance as to cover his ears, but he had to do something against this assault on his senses. He could almost imagine the sound of her voice linking up to his memory of the song he had heard that night. He still couldn't lift his eyes back to the center of the room, but he was recovering himself, determined not to do this, not now, for he knew what was coming next; had been anticipating it for weeks, and fantasizing about it for years. It was all he had left in the world to desire.

With effort he straightened his back, forming his face once again into his carefully carved mask, and shoved his memories, his regrets, and his shame, deep down.

"It's wonderful to have you on staff at last, Freya. I've been saying it for years, but of course Dumbledore knows best," an elderly wizard, who he vaguely recognized as the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, was saying to the self-conscious looking witch. He must have missed the bird turning back into the woman, and whatever else had been said, while his head was in another time.

"Yes, I agree he does," Freya answered, and Dumbledore chuckled.

If her comment came off to the other staff members as conceited, as if she had been referring to the headmaster's appointment of herself, there was at least one person who knew her intended meaning. She caught his eye, casting a concerned look towards his darkened corner. Several hexes that had to do with obscuring an opponent's vision leapt into his mind just then, none of them pleasant, and some of which he purposefully picked out to be painful. His tongue pressed against his teeth and he only halfheartedly tried to keep the poison out of his returned stare. Her expression seemed to tighten and she looked away.

"Well!" Dumbledore said, finally breaking everyone out of their chatter around Hogwarts' newest D.A.D.A teacher with a clap of his hands. "I believe our dear Freya Fawkes has received enough attention — certainly for this lifetime," he turned a knowing smile to her and some secret joke seemed to pass between them. "As I said before, there are two new staff members this year, and our second one has been waiting patiently for long enough." With a sweep of his arm, Dumbledore gestured his summons to the darkened corner of the room.

He felt himself stand up and walk forward automatically. If there was any doubt in him — about the nature of his hiring, about the surrounding staff who had gone deathly quiet, about being closer to the now irritatingly familiar redhead that conjured up horrible memories — no one watching would have been able to guess, nor could have guessed, unless he let something slip of his own choosing. He was perfectly composed as he stopped in front of Dumbledore and looked up at him expectantly, feeling strangely like he had done something similar, something that this little scene made a mockery of compared to the severity of that time. His new employer smiled at him with no hint of distrust or malicious intent; or indication that he was about to make him hold out his arm for a painful new decoration.

"Severus Snape," the headmaster began, with the full force of his quiet yet commanding voice much more audible at such close proximity. "I was sad to see Horace go, but I trust he has retired in good conscious after providing his former pupil with such thorough tutelage for the job." He conveniently left out why it had needed to be so thorough, stretched out over two years' time as it was, but there would be time for bitter thoughts later. Dumbledore held out his hand.

"I welcome you as our new Slytherin Head of House and as our new Potions Master."

He clasped his hand against the wizened older man's, squeezing tightly. "Thank you, truly, Headmaster." And for the briefest slip of the mask, he let true gratitude show, only for this one singular individual.

As they let their hands fall, however, his momentary feeling of winning a prize he had long sought fell short. There was one solitary sound in the small room, coming from Dumbledore's side, where the overeager red-haired witch stood clapping in oblivious support. His black eyes dragged a harsh line across to hers and, startled by his icy expression, she ceased her noise enough to realize the situation. Her eyes blinked away from his and out to the surrounding room that he couldn't bring himself to inspect with such leisure.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Thank you, Severus, I think that should do for now." He smiled again, but it was not returned.

Severus swiveled fully around to make a beeline for his chair as teachers he had spent years excelling under in their classes stared at him in either complete silence, or blatant distrust. By the time he sat down, he almost missed Slughorn's imbecilic chatter. _It does not matter,_ he told himself. _You expected this, so what does it matter?_ He didn't have an answer, and as he caught the eye of the Muggle Studies professor staring at him with unmasked hatred from across the room, he suddenly found he really didn't care after all. Let them waste their energy hating him. He still had his job.

But the headmaster seemed to be unsatisfied. He raised his voice once more, just as a question that sounded distinctly personally offended was beginning to be voiced at him. "Please do hold whatever it is you have to say," he piped up over the man, who went silent at once upon hearing the tone in Dumbledore's voice, "until after I have finished." He let a pause hang in the air until it was apparent no one would try to interrupt him. His expression was strained but unreadable, and Severus watched with a guarded look of his own.

"I know, undoubtedly, that many of you have twice as many questions on why I would hire someone rumored of being a Death Eater." The intake of breath from around the room made a collective hiss, but the 'rumored' Death Eater in question ignored this sound with ironic familiarity as he leaned forward a fraction of an inch. "And all I have to say on the matter, is this: they are just rumors. I trust Severus Snape, and he will remain at this school in my employ, until, hopefully, he retires at his own ripe old age." He turned his pale blue eyes back on Severus, and there was no twinkle in the gravely serious expression with which he cast down on him like a final judgement. He blinked under this incomprehensible stare, but the expression seemed to vanish as if he had imagined it.

"Well now, I trust that you would all like to get on with your evenings. I bid you an early goodnight from an aging man, and I will join you tomorrow for the start of another marvelous year." And with that he cast one more look to Freya, and then swept out of the room.

A tense beat seemed to pass through the air as everyone's eyes roamed about between two points of interest. It was the phoenix who moved first, stepping towards the Care of Magical Creatures teacher and striking up a conversation about how the grounds' unicorn brood was doing that year. He didn't need to be given a multi-colored sparking wand display to signal he should take this moment to hasten out of his seat and turn towards the door. But even as his hand touched the wood, he was discourteously put back on display.

"Severus?"

He didn't want to hear such a familiar use of his name in that voice, and he hadn't a clue why the maddening woman was ruining such a perfect exit. He knew the pause in his stride had already betrayed that he had heard her, but with a lurch of his stomach that had been collecting what felt like nothing but acid for his duration in the room, he decided he didn't care. He was done for the day. He pushed through the door and was marching passed dining tables before anyone could trap him into a staring contest with people he loathed and who seemed to loathe him right back.

—

It could have been that the only living things in the castle other than himself were the dancing flames of the torches along the walls. The distant sounds of frogs and other night creatures that lived around the lake heralding their active hours came through the glass of the high windows muted and detached from the interior world. Perhaps there were other people still chatting around a fire somewhere, or a house elf pitter-patter-ing to bring those people a tray of finger foods - or perhaps not. In the strong stone walls, rooms away, he could imagine he was perfectly alone.

It was vastly freeing; being able to walk through the halls of Hogwarts with the authority of his new title. However, at present there wasn't anywhere he would rather go than down a path he had been so many times before. He strode down the sloping steps to the dungeons, letting the last of the knots in his stomach come undone and his stiff shoulders slacken. He had dropped off his personal belongings only hours before, and his modest yet luxuriantly comfortable-looking bed awaited him, already dressed.

As he passed the potions classroom his stomach no longer felt acidic but gave a triumphant little flip. Filch had ushered him down, unnecessarily, to his chambers earlier that day, and he had had to hide his almost boyish giddiness at the new prospects this hall had for him. Now, comfortably alone, he could let the corners of his mouth slide up in satisfaction. _His_ potion's classroom. _His_ House dormitory. _His_ teacher's office. The whole hall was his turf, in a way it had never been before, even as a 7th year, even in a gaggle of his closest friends.

Of course, most of his school friends were either locked up, dead, or on the run by now, and by any of these fates would undoubtedly never see these halls again. People he had spent a good chunk of his life, his whole time at Hogwarts, thinking of as loathsome enemies were dead as well. In his mind's eye, both of these groupings of ghosts seemed to bunch up together, separated by some line that extended out from himself, and yet seemed too blurry to make out anymore. His smile had faded out into thoughtfulness by the time his footsteps slowly came to a stop at the end of the hall.

There was a time when he might have missed them, or feared for the safety of the living. But now as he stood staring with unseeing eyes at the door to his office, he only felt carved out and hollow. There was a far more powerful current running just underneath his lowest surface layer that held overwhelming grief the likes of which washed clean away anything he could have mustered for the others, and threatened that any misstep that brought him too close to the raging waters would be devastating.

Listlessly, he pulled his key-ring from the pocket of his robes and, after some fumbling, found the right one to hold aloft. He didn't put it in the keyhole just yet, though. His mind was racing full of dark thoughts, and, even more painful, bright vivid ones that threatened to scorch him as if he was some underground beast born of the dungeons themselves that had never seen sunlight and was too weak to face it, yet ran to it all the same.

He could run upstairs, right now, and no one would stop him. There would be no students there, certainly none belonging to the House of the tower which he had in mind, and hopefully no teachers. McGonagall was most likely still downstairs, or in her own office. Not that he needed to sneak around her like some schoolboy anyway.

He felt the small sharp metalwork of the key press into his fingers as he gripped it tight.

But what did it matter? He wouldn't find anyone up there. That was the point of his deluded comfort in these halls - they were empty. There would be no girl with auburn hair coming out of the portrait-hole, whether angry to see him, or happily laughing with a group of friends surrounding her. No careful footsteps on the marble late at night, or exasperated sighs on his behalf. Even if he brought her favorite sweets from Honeydukes. Even if he slept on the floor of the hall for a whole fortnight. Never again.

The key slipped into the lock but it felt like he was jinxed with slow-moving. He didn't even turn it, as if the tiny noise of the latch and groan of the door's hinge would be the minuscule beat of a butterfly's wings that would send him over the edge and back down into the place where he was drowning.

A different noise than metal clinking, softer and further away, came to him then. He thought he was imagining it at first, making up the sound in his mind to go along with the memories he was ensnared in. But the gentle _tap-tap_ grew clearer until he accepted the reality and turned expectantly towards the bend in the hall to face it.

And there came that auburn hair, the wrong color, the wrong length, on the wrong face, the wrong person, and he almost reached for his wand as his taut tether was yanked even closer to the point of snapping.

"Severus?"

The look on her face betrayed how little he was masking his emotions, but he didn't care. He relished for a moment the startled confusion that crossed her features as she came fully into view of him, hoping that if he looked menacing enough, she would go away.

"Can I help you?" he asked, though it was more of a threat.

"Err... Well, no. I was actually hoping maybe I could help you—"

"I do not need," he strained the words through his teeth, "your _help_." He practically spat the word like it was poison.

He didn't want to listen to some doe-eyed magical creature freak of a woman stammer out pity for him. He had seen quite enough of her, both in the teacher's lounge and in his memories of her other form, to gauge what kind of person she was: meddling, intrusive, too stupid to realize she was the pitiable one in the equation for being so oblivious, and yet wanting to extend a hand to whomever she deemed weak and lesser. He had met people like her before and he hated every one of them. And none of them had stolen his preferred job out from under his nose by way of nepotism.

"Oh." She seemed to draw a blank at this, and he watched with growing aggravation at how long it took her to change direction. Tentatively, she raised a smile. "Well, if you ever are in need of some, I've got plenty to spare — jarfuls even — and I'll be just up a few floors."

"Wonderful," he said languidly with great reproach at her next-door neighbor demeanor that was especially grating on his current mood. "I believe I have all the jars of actually useful ingredients at my disposal in here." He nodded to the office door.

She squinted at the direction he had indicated, considering this. "Hmm. I wonder about that." Her murmured words seemed to have been more to herself, but the impact was done anyway.

His mouth popped open in indignation. "I think I know my own dungeons better than you do," he sneered.

But she didn't seem to catch any of the hostility, only one particular word. " _Your_ dungeons? I highly doubt that."

"Doubt that they're _mine_?" he questioned, his voice rising.

She considered him carefully for a moment. "No, of course not. You are Potions Master now, after all. But I think it's a little absurd to say you know everything about them, especially to me."

If he didn't know any better, he would say she was challenging him. At the very least, whether intentional or not, she was challenging every ounce of his patience. To not only be selected over him in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but to come down here to the job he _had_ landed and imply she knew anything more than him? He flexed his wand hand close to his pocket and he saw her eyes flick to it with attentiveness he hadn't anticipated. The placid smile on her face started to slip at the corners.

"Do you need something from me?" It was only a rephrasing of his earlier question to fill the air, but he hoped it would interrupt whatever was going through her head about his movement. Annoying witch or otherwise, Dumbledore had called her a close friend, and he was no longer hanging around dark manors full of ill-mannered individuals who would curse each other as soon as murmur a greeting. He couldn't be making any mistakes now.

"Actually," she began, seeming to latch on to an opportunity, "yes, I do." He had a second of genuine surprise that immediately seeped into dread as he realized his random question had trapped him into unwittingly offering up a favor with a simple twist of his words by someone who evidently could not take a hint to save her life.

"That wasn't an—" But his protest went unnoticed.

She had held back from him as they talked, but now she strode up to just out of arm's reach. Looking up into his face with eyes full of friendly determination, she nodded. "Right. I didn't come down here to argue about potions." She held out her hand.

He stared at it, unmoving. Was this a joke?

"Um," she cupped her other hand to her mouth as if to whisper to him. "You need to shake it so I can say the rest."

He considered perhaps just removing both her hands from her arms with a joint-separating jinx, leaving her to figure out how to undo it on her own, and turning in for the night. But judging by the earnestness with which she looked up at him, there would be no escape until he fulfilled his end of this civilized gesture. A simple handshake would do well to cover up his twitchy wand hand anyway.

"Fine." He took her hand, surprised by the abnormal warmth, and felt her shake with unnecessary vigor. But it was his gaze which was most held ensnared by hers as she finally got out what she had been waiting to say.

"You can help me make up for the rudeness of the other staff by allowing me to properly welcome you back to Hogwarts as a fellow teacher." She released him, grinning with satisfaction. "I didn't get to shake your hand earlier, so I thought I'd come down and see if I could still get one in. It's good to have you on."

His hand was left hanging in the air, feeling the heat slowly fade as he stared dumbly. Her eyes fell to look at it, and as if compelled to follow, so did his own. He stirred from his stupor and quickly retracted his arm back to his side, annoyed at himself for being so caught off guard. She raised an eyebrow and laughed, a soft but hearty sound that made his stomach lurch in the same way calling his name had. He suspected her voice, in any way that it resonated, must carry some level of phoenix magic. It wasn't a type of sound nor a type of magic that should be given breath here in the cold dungeons beneath the castle, and it further shattered the simple sorrowful peace he had been enjoying.

Her smile died away and the apologetic look he had seen her wear earlier crept back to her face, as if she was reading his thoughts. "Sorry for troubling you if you were heading in for the night. I just — It just didn't sit right with me."

There was that pity again, swooping in like some coddling matron to coo at him as if he were about to break apart at any moment. Ever the hero to the injustices of the world. It disgusted him, and the more he thought about all the times a certain phoenix had been idly perched nearby during some of his most vulnerable moments this past year, he couldn't help but feel his privacy had been grievously betrayed. He suspected that was the real reason she was here; not out of camaraderie, but crudely butting in just because she had unearned information and had taken it upon herself to act. A shame that she lacked the critical piece of knowledge that he had in previous years been tasked with finding a way to kill Dumbledore's precious phoenix, or she might be a lot less likely to want to be anywhere near him.

"Err, are you alri—"

"Fine," he interjected before he was forced to hear any more of that whining concern. "I'm fine."

"Oh," she said in dull surprise for the second time. He wasn't sure if she was purposefully playing dumb, or it was just that shocking that someone would rebuff her so thoroughly. "Well, I truly hope that is the case." Her smile this time seemed so perplexingly genuine it made his lip curl and he half turned back towards the office just to avoid it.

"Right. If that's all..." He just wanted to get through the door without opening it in any kind of accidental invitation. He suspected this worked similar to opening a door around a stray cat and she would just waltz right in if he wasn't careful. His hand hovered half-up half-down, unsure if he was in the clear to reach for the handle yet.

Almost as if in direct defiance of his intentions, she reached passed him in one simple motion. "Oh, is your lock stuck?" She noisily jiggled the key-ring, hung forgotten and waiting this whole time, until the door unlatched and swung open. "Oh. Guess not."

He stood motionless, steadying himself before the seething sigh that would only bring his bubbling irritation to the surface could slip out. If she invited herself in, he would have to just tell her simply to get the hell out of his office and never come back. And to keep her hands off his things. The joint-separation hex came back to his mind and he seriously considered if it wouldn't be worth it just to teach her a lesson and break this overly friendly atmosphere that she seemed determined to impress upon him.

She raised one innocently questioning eyebrow at his statuesque pose. "Well, goodnight. Sleep well, Severus."

"I—" He snapped at this final indignity, having heard his name used so casually one too many times, and one too many pleasantries from someone whom he knew most prominently as nothing more than a glimpse of feathers on a perch. He rounded on her just as she was turning to leave. "Just who in the hell do you think you are?"

She blinked in mild surprise compared to his enraged tone and posture. "Sorry?"

He was glad for her total airheadedness in that moment, because it meant he could continue without interruption knowing she had nothing of importance to say. "You think you can just use my name so casually, follow me, talk down to me, and then leave on your own terms?" Her mouth popped open like she might reply, but he continued. "What gives you the right to meddle with such carelessness?"

"Err... I do care. I was just concerned—"

" _Well stop._ I didn't ask for your concern; not here, and not on the night that I'm supposedly meant to remember you from - which I don't!"

"You don't?" This seemed to let out some of the cool air in her demeanor.

"I—" His ranting was momentarily interrupted as his eyes, still full of animosity, scanned her face. The reality simply would not match up to his blurry memory, which contained a much more bittersweet concoction that he was unwilling to replace. The fact that she was so rudely butting into even his memories only further angered him. "I _do not_. And even if I did, I wouldn't be glad to see you. You think just because you showed up out of nowhere that night and—"

"Showed up?" Her voice had barely risen, but the question still cut across the furor his. "You summoned me there."

"I summoned Dumbledore! And don't interrupt me!"

"I'll interrupt all I want, because it's a good thing I did show up, otherwise you'd be— well—"

"Well, aren't you just the most noble of Dumbledore's pets? Saving even the Death Eaters! Would you like an award?"

" _No_ —"

"Well I'm not going to thank you, so you can stop _cozying up_."

Her straining eyes were searching his in vain. Seemingly, she hadn't been able to make sense out of anything he had said, and he silently cursed her thickheadedness. "I—… All I said was 'goodnight'. What's this about?"

"What this is about," he took a deep breath finally and flexed his balled-up hands, "is that I will not put up with being stared at all year like I am some soulless apparition that was heroically dragged in from the rain by a _she-beast_."

Her eyes shut momentarily as if he had slapped her. When she opened them, she was looking at the ground and her stature seemed to have diminished. "Well... Well, fine. If that's the way you want it to be then."

He caught the movement of her hands and reacted instantly, his fist already hovering over the pocket in his own robes, and in a flash, his wand was out and he had wordlessly delivered the hex he had been itching to ever since she first dared look at him as if he were lesser.

But even as the spell hit her squarely in the front of her robes, the red jet of light exploded into harmless sparks, and she was left blinking them from wincing eyes.

In the still silence that followed, he gaped. He checked again — saw both her hands stuffed into her pockets, in what was unmistakably a simple moody gesture of someone about to storm off — then looked back up into her eyes which held no more sense of warmth than the rest of the chilled dungeon air. Her hands, both perfectly intact, came up to dust off her robes.

"I—"

"Finished?" she asked in a low tone, though her eyes portrayed quite a loud message cutting through the dim light, the flicker of the torches seeming to dance in correspondence with her stare.

He hastily lowered his arm to his side for the second time in their meeting, stuffing his wand back into his pocket.

"Good." Her voice stayed quiet, but she spoke with calculated clarity. "I wouldn't want you to sprain your wrist casting useless curses on a beast so impervious to them."

Nothing in the hall made a sound except for the loud pulse of his own heartbeat in his ears. As he stared wide-eyed, her piercing gaze reminded him of the ice-cold disapproval that Dumbledore had borne down on him the first time he had met with him not as an aspiring teacher, but as a desperate traitor. And everything the man had done for him since to keep him out of trouble, all the plans that had been made, vouching for him at his trial even as the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had dementors trained on him without so much as a question asked yet. His nerves had gotten so frayed in just one month, plus six spent praying he wouldn't be found out, that he couldn't even tell someone reaching for their wand apart from stowing their hands in their pockets. And now that he was thinking of Azkaban and dementors again, his pulse seemed to quicken.

She held his gaze for a heartbeat longer and then blinked, looking away as if to break the spell that had been infused in the air. He watched her run her fingers through her hair as she drew in a deep breath and sighed.

"Don't look so worried—" She ended her sentence awkwardly, frowning and working her jaw, and he imagined his name was meant to take this gap but her tongue had twisted, holding it back. Instead, in the pause, she ducked her head and returned her hands to her pockets, with a twitch as if she remembered this was a dangerous move. "No harm done, yes? You're safe and sound." She inclined her chin and looked him over once before nodding as if to confirm this, then turned to leave.

"Goodnight."

Before he could unglue his mouth to reply, she was quickly walking away down the hall, long red hair flourishing behind her.

It was hours later when his head finally hit the pillow of his unfamiliar bed, and another hour still before his mind stopped swimming; with thoughts of dead friends, lies smoothly told, and phoenix song that made his chest ache.

* * *

_—***—_


	2. Little Light Lies

_— *** —_

* * *

Small mechanical cranking preceded the sudden sound of a loud gong that reverberated through the modest accommodations of the dungeon bedchamber.

Summoned from his shallow dreaming, Severus listened to the methodical sound as it repeated again and again, sounding unfamiliar but distinctive all the same. He was distantly aware that it was the dull chime of the grandfather clock in his room, and it would stop soon once it had finished its dutiful counting of the hour. Soon. Any time now.

He shot up in bed as he counted at least up to ten before it stopped. Looking around with bleary eyes, he attempted to locate where the sound had been coming from, thrown by how different everything was when one of his ears wasn't pressed into a feathery pillow. He found the handsome looking grandfather clock, carved in black wood with a face of bronze and ivory, and stared at it.

Twelve.

His head swiveled to look at his bedside table, which was empty of the much smaller metal clock he had sat there the night before. He leaned over the edge of his bed and located it lying helplessly on its side, some feet away. So much for _Alarm Charms That Do You No Harm_. He evidently needed them to do some harm in order to rouse him. That's what he gets for taking advice from a pamphlet at a run-down tavern.

His current accommodations far exceeded the previous months' haunts he had been finding home in, and he lingered for a moment still half-wrapped in comfortable blankets that spoke no history of moths or other pests.

Eventually, with effort, he pushed himself out of bed and onto stiff legs.

He felt conflicting feelings of mentally well-rested but sore in body, which made sense given he had slept for nearly twelve hours. It made even more sense given he had been doing so for a full month now, in near consistently inconsistent sleep patterns. Today was meant to be his last day to finally get his schedule back on track before he would be required to wake up for classes, otherwise his students would be introduced to him as a name on a chalkboard and nothing more; just a specter of a teacher.

He rubbed his face once over in front of the vanity set, not looking at his reflection in the decorative mirror. It would be fitting, given he felt like a ghost. It was the waking up that was always the hardest, apart from the falling asleep, which was equally bad. And the being awake bit. At least he now had plenty of distractions to keep him occupied.

The days after the fall had been a mad scramble, but at least things had been happening. The small gap in time leading up to his trial had been rough, but after that sharp peak of panic, a long three weeks had lapsed by with nothing to do but stay put and keep his head down, consumed in his own kind of prison.

After quickly pulling on his shabby clothes and covering them up with his less-shabby cloak (recently acquired), he took the stone steps down the little stairway back to his office, where everything from the night before was still laid out.

He had stayed awake for as long as he could, organizing everything he could get his hands on. Slughorn had left him with a large amount of work to do if he was going to make things more accustomed to his tastes, and it would all be last minute. This was partly because he had thought it impolite to start dismantling everything the old Potion's Master had done while he was still hovering around yesterday, and partly because he couldn't even get an invitation into the castle before yesterday. Their meetings had always taken place in the safe-haven middle ground of Hogsmeade, and all his smooth talking had done nothing against what he could only assume were Dumbledore's orders to keep him out. Things didn't change in the six months following Severus's private request for Dumbledore's help, either.

Most of the office was looking better already, with the frou-frou luxurious draperies and hangings all gone, no more armchair so soft he sank into it to the point of not being able to sit up straight to write, and the desk itself had been the final transfiguration; into a more informal function-over-stateliness creation.

Currently the desk was displaying an assortment of potions, which he now surveyed. They were all the leftovers that he hadn't found a home for: one bulky cauldron that was still smoking in exactly the same way he had always seen it smoke even as a student, and upon inspection he had found it contained only an unidentifiable sticky black tar substance; nine different potions that he was sure he could recreate much more accurately, and he was set to do just that as his morning — or noon — went on; one small phial of what could have been _Felix Felicis_ if not for the lack of identifying splashes at the surface, so he could only assume it was actual liquid gold; and one potion of particular interest, as he had found it forgotten in a trapped safe and he was sure it was illegal by ministry standards, though perhaps not Hogwarts standards. There was also a small hap-hazard pile of ingredients that had gone bad or were substandard in his opinion.

His stare hazed in and out of focus as he blinked heavily down at the array, willing his brain to wake up quicker than it seemed to want to, so that he could get to work. But even as his mental checklist containing everything he needed to do before the start-of-term feast attempted to push itself to the surface, his mind was wandering away back to his dreams. He rubbed his chest absently, frowning as he tried to suppress the memory of phoenix song, a month stale but still somehow clinging to his insides. As much work as he still had to do, his body itched to go upstairs to fulfill a different nagging desire. The idea had come to him late last night, but he hadn't dared to leave his hall after his episode with the phoenix woman.

It would have to wait. He couldn't keep staring at the inadequately colored Draught of Living Death, knowing he could make one better than Slughorn had ever been able to instruct him.

—

An hour later, with the office looking much more up to snuff with everything he would need for his first week of classes, he now set to work on the classroom itself.

More frivolous draperies were taken down, the curtains replaced with much thicker ones to block more light, and the various moving portraits of famous witch and wizard potions experts were nonplussed to find they were being dislodged one by one for actual useful artwork depicting what happens when one does not practice proper potion-making safety.

As he unceremoniously levitated one such portrait to a storage closet, the little wizard framed in silver protested loudly, claiming that he had been hanging in this room for decades. "And how old are you, young man? Most certainly just a greenhorn, why, Professor Slughorn would never—"

" _Mr_. Slughorn is no longer teaching at this school," he said, and shut the closet door with a sharp flick of his wand, not pleased at having his age brought into question given he had been graduated for four years already. Perhaps he needed to sprout a three-foot-long beard from his smooth chin before people would stop commenting on how young he was for a professor.

The muffled indignant yell that came from the closet seemed to be using the name of Dumbledore to elicit a threat, but he turned his back, busying himself with the teacher's desk now.

He sighed through his nose as his eyes trailed over the familiar intricately carved woodwork, burnished and coated to a beautiful deep mahogany. He had confidently brought his own potions up to this desk more times than he could remember. He couldn't recollect any of the other teacher's desks as clearly in his mind as this one, though perhaps this had more to do with the nature of the class having to do with turning over physical items. Or perhaps it was just the memories of one of the few places he had been praised without the note of terse hesitation in the voice of his professor.

He hadn't expected teaching to be a raucous never-ending social party, but it was beginning to irk him that it seemed not a single soul existed — not teacher, not portrait, probably not even a suit of enchanted armor — that would be glad to welcome him to the school. The phoenix woman didn't count, as he had mentally neatly tucked their entire interaction down into a folder of unimportant thoughts that hadn't happened, save for a few details, and Dumbledore... Well, he would believe Dumbledore actually wanted him there when the man could smile at him behind closed doors with a single ounce of what he showed in front of other people. The headmaster seemed to care more about convincing others of his innocence, rather than making Severus himself feel like anything less than a guilty felon who had only escaped prison by the grace of Dumbledore himself.

Of all the people at Hogwarts, so far Slughorn seemed to be the only one who could look passed recent accusations and focus on the quality of work, albeit a bit too whimsically.

Horace Slughorn had been all too easy to work over once Dumbledore had brushed Severus aside in his first interview and left him with no other avenues for getting close to the school other than a simple trite line to 'further his studies'. Lucky that he had gotten that throw-away advice though, as his 18-year-old-self had hung in a very terrifying limbo during the moments after stepping out of that interview, thinking he would have to return to his master with a failed plan. It was running into his old potion's professor and quickly thinking up a new mode of operation on the spot, one that not even Dumbledore could argue with since it was his own advice, that had saved him. Slughorn had been jubilant to hear that one of his own students sought to take his place, especially given that he had been looking to retire soon anyway, and particularly one that he knew to have been in the top of his classes. He was Severus's access point for all information regarding the school and whereabouts of Dumbledore after that. And the boastful man had passed on that information willingly, between words of encouragement with his boyishly wide smile, and his hand on his shoulder; the picture of a perfect teacher and then mentor.

He ultimately decided to leave the desk as it was. Perhaps one of his students would spill something on the varnish and he would have a practical reason to replace it later. For now, it could stay.

With one slow turn, he surveyed his work on the room. It would do for now, and it at least made him feel more like he belonged here, more than anything else had so far anyway. However, his satisfaction with his preparedness did not ease the underlying anxious feeling humming below his surface.

As he stood at the front of the classroom, staring out over the desks, he imagined more vividly than he had been capable of without the correct atmosphere what the rest of the week would be like. If the reaction of his fellow faculty was any indication, things could get rather troublesome. Students would have been the least of his worries, if not for the fact that children came with parents — parents, who often overheard things at work, gossiped just like their kids, and packed those thoughts into their heads the same as an extra pair of socks in their trunks. He could just imagine a Howler landing in Dumbledore's office, hollering about how he had hired an alleged Death Eater, or perhaps even stating that their child had been in attendance, in a younger year, during the same time as the newest Potion's instructor, and remembered him as being most unpleasant. Or remembered worse. There were things that only those who had been enrolled at the same time as him would know, though he prayed upperclassmen gossiping had never made it to the ears of the fresher faces, or he would be dealing with current N.E.W.T. level students that knew things he just might have to threaten to fail them for if revealed.

Or curse their little mouths shut before they could utter the words to the whole class. Whichever worked quicker.

Though, on second thought, perhaps he shouldn't entertain any more thoughts of curses, given that he was already starting off the school year with a track record before it had even officially begun. If the staff currently held him in contempt without even knowing (he hoped) any details of what he was accused of other than association, what would they have to say after they learned he had attempted to curse the seemingly beloved phoenix?

This line of thinking did nothing to help his queasy stomach, and as he chewed his lower lip, he cast a glance to the clock hung on the wall. He still had a few hours before the train would be arriving and he would need to situate himself at the staff table for the first time. Plenty of time for what he wanted to do, but also plenty of time to have a run-in with an unpleasant conversation partner. The freedom of the halls he had felt last night seemed a distant delusion, as he now saw leaving his personal space in the dungeons as on par with taking a stroll through the Forbidden Forest; which he had done as a student before, and much more nerve-wracking things since then, but at the moment he wished he could just have time to himself to skulk around undetected.

Well, on that note, he could always rely on one of his old tried and true skulking techniques.

On soles silenced by a simple bit of magic, he noiselessly climbed the stairs up to the grand library, peering around nervously, though he kept trying to correct this tick. He had every right to be here; he was a teacher; Dumbledore himself had vouched for him in front of all the staff... This reel repeated unhelpfully in his brain, doing nothing to straighten his back and make him not look like he was sneaking around. His destination didn't help matters, either.

He strode through archways sectioning off different subjects into smaller rooms; genealogy, ancient runes, beginners' guides, and advanced charms. At the end of the straight-away, he came to the west chamber, opening up into a vast two-story room with a center dedicated to group study tables and a decorative floor pattern. The shelves around the edges were high, with tall ladders scattered around promising a mostly-safe climb to get those hard to reach books, and a small spiral staircase tucked on one end leading up to the balcony that hung over the rim of the whole room. He had only a moment's peace to take in the comforting sight, before his eyes came to a halt, fixated on the railing up above and to his left.

His shoulders slackened with weary defeat; mouth slightly open in incredulous astonishment as he stared up at the phoenix perched there. She was gazing like a hawk back down at him. He stood like prey too scared to move, only he felt on the contrary like his anxiety had lifted. The prey had spotted its attacker and accepted its fate. Nothing could be done about this predicament now except to embrace a swift and painless death. And, perhaps, it just so happened to be a second legendary rare bird. Perhaps this one didn't transform, and would just sit there, quietly. Perhaps Madam Pince, though the front office had been dark when he passed it, would come rushing out in a heroic show of force to screech away the extremely flammable magical creature from her precious books.

No sound echoed through the chamber other than his own deep sigh, not even a ruffle of feathers.

There was no sense turning back now. He might as well have an audience for his deeply personal moment alone. Certainly, it would give him more time to practice keeping his emotions in check.

Tightening his jaw, he strode across the room directly to the padlocked gates of the restricted section, pulling out his teacher's key-ring as he did so.

Just as he was jamming the first unknown key into the lock, he heard the recognizable snap some distance behind him and his movements froze.

"Looking for a little light reading material?"

He ignored this, jiggling the key until he was certain it actually did not fit the lock, and it wasn't just his desperate irate movements that were inadequately turning it. Pulling out the dud, he shuffled through his office key, classroom storage key, a small cabinet key, and came to another that currently held no purpose, shoving it into the lock as well.

"Because I think there are other places where you might find more interesting books."

He almost scoffed at this, as if he hadn't rifled through every single available reading material in the school in his seven years. Even the place he was currently attempting to access was one that held no secrets to him. He just wanted to see something... See it written in print, so he could satisfy his mind...

The second key obviously did not work either, and he yanked it out from where his jamming had stuck it among the metal. He was out of logical keys, but he could always stray to the illogical. Looking from his known keys to the padlock, it was obvious none of them matched up, though.

"Having trouble?" Her voice seemed to echo in a mockingly cheerful way through the room. Apparently, she did indeed keep 'jarfuls of helpfulness' on supply, because her tone held no sign that anything from last night had left a lasting impression, not least of which that he had used his wand on her.

"Not at all, thanks," he replied curtly. His hand went to his pocket and even in his haste, he attempted to make the motion obvious and not like he was about to round on her. Pulling out his wand, he was only able to test one unlocking spell before he was interrupted.

"Oh, you were right the first time, it does require a key," she piped up helpfully.

He tapped his teeth together, feeling the muscles in his jaw flex uncomfortably. Half-turning to look over his shoulder, he took in the figure standing a ways back from him, her arms tucked neatly behind her back and long hair shining in the daylight. She lifted her chin in greeting, smiling serenely against the strained atmosphere of the situation. He turned back to the locked gates and tried two more unlocking spells just to spite her.

Neither of them worked, and he was faced with the decision to either stand staring at an unsolvable problem, or turn and face an insufferable person. The idea of wasting his time any further didn't seem appealing. He pocketed his wand and keys and turned swiftly on his heel, sending his cloak swishing around his shoes.

"It appears," he drawled sardonically, "that I do not have the key."

She raised her brows. "Oh, no? I thought for sure you were about to pull out a hidden pocketful of key-rings to try."

"I only have this one," he said, and his pocket jingled merrily as he angrily shook it. "Teachers are meant to get keys to restricted areas of the school, though, are they not?"

"They are," she agreed.

"And I am a teacher, am I not?"

She nodded, "Indeed. Congratulations, again, by the way."

He ignored her. "And yet... I do not have the key."

"Hm..." She mused on this conundrum.

"Do you have your set of keys?" He loathed to ask, but if she was going to make a show of aid, she could at least fork over the goods. Unfortunately, when she patted the pockets of her brown robes down, the only items she pulled out were a small planner, a quill, and a whole apple.

"Must be in my school robes."

"Wonderful. What a great help you are," he sneered.

Completely unfazed, she perked up as if she had just had a wonderful idea. "Well, maybe you could try all of yours again. Third time's the charm."

He bit the tip of his tongue, sighing through his nose as she carried on smiling with that overly friendly grin. She was not helpful at all actually, she was just an impish nuisance.

His eyes drifted to the large clock on the wall behind her and he indicated it with a nod of his head. "I don't have all day to stand here wasting that much time."

She turned and looked as well, but her assessment differed from his. "Oh, there's plenty of time before the feast for you to find it!"

His eyes focused back on her with attentiveness. "Find it?"

She nodded, again. The corners of her lips seemed to tip upward even more.

He blinked listlessly at her. Weighing out the cost-benefit in his mind, he finally nodded once to himself in acceptance. "You know where the key is." It was a statement of fact, perhaps one that should have been very obvious to him sooner.

"Of course," she said, tipping her head in a little bow.

"Where is it." Again, he didn't have the energy to feign politeness after standing like a first-year fool for five minutes trying to unlock something so simple.

"In Madam Pince's office," came her immediate reply.

At least her overeager jabber mouth was good for spitting out information when asked the right question, he thought. He started walking back the way he had come at once, breezing right passed her without a second thought.

But even as his long legs carried him towards the entrance to the chamber, smaller footsteps came rushing up behind him, and she had darted into his path before he could make it more than halfway across the room. His footing drew up short, and he had to catch himself before he crashed right into her, backing up in annoyance.

"Excuse you," he said, affronted.

"You're excused," she replied. "But where is it you're rushing off to?"

"To get," he replied with purposeful slowness, "the key."

"So that you can get into the restricted section?"

" _Yes._ " _Obviously. You idiot._

"But you can't."

His eyes nearly rolled to the ceiling, which happened to hold a beautiful intricate skylight casting lovely peaceful rays of afternoon sunshine onto his morose face. His gaze leveled out somewhere across the room above the infuriating woman's head, not even wanting to look at her.

"And why can't I?" He had had more than enough of this little game, and her in general. "I am a teacher at this school, I can browse any bookshelf I want, at any time, for any reason."

She considered this for a moment, eyes squinting in concentration. "Well, that would be true... except for in this case, with that particular set of books."

His hands automatically curled into fists, but he flexed the motion out, attempting to retain some sense of calm. This conundrum had occurred to him of course, which was why he had tried to draw as little attention to his excursion as possible. Dumbledore had already sternly forbade him from getting the specific teaching position he wanted for much the same reason that he assumed he was now being shooed away from books full of the Dark Arts. Truthfully, what he wanted to do held no ill intent, and if Dumbledore or any other staff had a problem with him in particular reading upper level dark magic, well, he had read worse, with far worse intentions. He didn't need to invent some carefully crafted lie to get him out of a guilty verdict, just the very simple truth would do.

For them, anyway. But for her...

"I just wanted to reread something I had picked up as a student," he said with a carefully leveled voice.

"Hm... That's all well and good, but you still can't."

His fists broke his control and balled up at his sides. "And why not?" he shot back.

She looked up at him in wide-eyed innocence. "Well, because you haven't got the key."

His hard stare bore down on her. The corner of her lips twitched and his eye mimicked the tiny spasm. He was almost sure that cursing her a second time would be worth being sacked.

She broke the silence first, apparently finding this whole affair too funny to hold her laughter in any longer. "Sorry, sorry. Just a joke," she pushed her fingers through her long hair and he almost imagined that the light glittering off the movement was the magical indication of a demonic entity spawned in to torment the living.

"But really," she continued, turning her gaze back onto him, "you should find something better to do with your time than this."

Despite his quietly simmering blood and his mind already whirring to figure out how exactly he would be sneaking into Madam Pince's office later, something in her tone brought his eyes back to meet hers. It was an innocuous enough comment, and the amusement from her ribbing still lingered at the corners of her lips, but it was her eyes that gave him pause.

Up close, and in the light that fell from the overhead windows casting bold shadows across her face, he could make out her true eye color for the first time: a deep gold that glowed in a way that otherwise would have been quite beautiful, but in her current stare seemed to glint a dangerous warning in contrast with her cheerful demeanor. He stared back, captivated, as a cold skepticism settled in and evaporated all his previous thoughts.

The overly friendly phoenix seemed to give way to a new image, and he felt as if he were standing before an entirely different magical beast, one that championed gold as well: the sphinx. She was poised directly in his path, staring at him with an unspoken incomprehensible riddle. One that, never the less, was unraveling piece by piece in his mind. It felt as if the final ingredient to a potion was being dropped into his stomach, bringing into his mind into clarity.

This woman, despite her antics and her blinking of eyelashes, was not friendly at all. She was following him around with purpose beyond her over-bearing nature, eating up his time as she talked him around in circles while the clock ran out. Dumbledore's pet bird, whom he trusted and kept at his side always, and now just happened to be teaching at the same time as him, and showing up in places when he was alone... Dumbledore, who's smile had never been for his sake...

So that's how it was then. He had been hired just to be put in a safe place where his actions could be guarded; where a birds-eye-view could be kept over him at all times, while Dumbledore himself could hide his disapproving face in the shadows.

He suddenly drew in a deep breath and let it out as a steady sigh. He nodded once to the redhead. "Alright. I'll get right on that." And side-stepped her a second time, carrying on his path towards the archway.

That was fine. That was praise-worthy, even. How clever of Dumbledore to use his own ambitions against him, trapping him into a commitment he could not so easily back out of. It was calming, in a way, to know the truth. For the truth, that this woman had zero interest in him beyond her duties as a kind of keeper, and that Dumbledore's trust in him was below the level of a student, who could at least request permission to visit the restricted section — well, that truth only elicited a sense of tranquility over him.

If there was one thing that he was good at, it was the subtle game of deceit.

He should have been holding himself in proper balance from the start of course; his own mistake for assuming that Dumbledore wouldn't have vouched for him if he didn't trust him fully. Undoubtedly, the curse he had aimed at the woman last night had docked him another harsh point to his already low starting position. No matter. He would just have to play a bit safer. This came as a welcome reminder that he couldn't be dropping his defenses so easily. Though it did pose a much harder task of sneaking into places he wasn't allowed to be in if he was going to be stalked around every corner by a magical creature.

"Ah—"

He paused in mid-stride as he heard the familiar tapping of footsteps and a raised call behind him.

"Please wait — sorry," the footsteps stopped and he turned just as the woman caught up to him, apparently having ran down the long hall, though awkwardly, with one hand behind her back. "Very sorry. I didn't mean to chase you out of the library like that," she said, and he almost smirked because of course his guard wouldn't want him to wander too far unattended.

She took a deep breath, and to her credit as an actress, looked genuinely apologetic before she continued.

"It's just that Madam Pince's office is also locked, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to double down on breaking into locked places, but, well," she revealed her hidden hand and his mouth actually popped open in surprise, throwing the clarity he had just held into the fire like torn up paper. "If you want to go on and read your book, I think you'll find that it's quite open now."

He stared at the padlock held out in her hand for inspection, sporting unmistakable signs that the inner mechanisms had been melted and were seeping out of the keyhole.

"I would have got it sooner, but my wand work isn't so good, and I might have had to resort to, well..."

His eyes pulled away from the padlock to her other hand, where she wiggled her fingers. She looked too repentant to say it out loud, but as his dumbstruck brain caught up to what she had been babbling, he finished for her. "Phoenix fire."

"Yes, I may have — Well — I'm sure that it can fixed properly, although it is a magically crafted lock, and school is starting soon, and..." She trailed off and he made no effort to fill the silence this time, still dumbfounded. "Well! Please enjoy your book, in any case! I have to go, err, take this to Albus..."

He continued to stare at the place she had been standing as her footsteps died away behind him. After a while, he finally turned around, blinking in bewilderment.

_What... in the name of Merlin..._

He tried for all of five seconds to piece together what kind of trick this was, or if he was losing it and perhaps just paranoid beyond belief, or if there was a bright red and gold bird watching him from around a corner... before shaking his head and retracing his steps back to the west wing, feeling as if he was going through a revolving door that was rattling his brain around.

If she was only acting, he thought to himself as he made his way back towards the wrought-iron gates, which, sure enough, were swung open wide, then she deserved some sort of award. He wondered if the name-sake of a secret organization could receive any higher honor, or if perhaps there was an award for being the most disarmingly half-witted creature to roam the earth.

He paused before stepping over the threshold, half expecting a burst of feathers to pop out accompanied by an auror and a written warrant for his arrest, but nothing more exciting happened than the well-worn carpet giving way to his shoe. He was alone and exactly where he wanted to be at last.

Of course, he wasn't disarmed enough — and in fact felt even more paranoid than before because he had even less of a clue what was going on — to not hazard at least one life-form revealing spell. His eyes scrutinized the little yellow ball of light as it checked the surroundings before returning to him with no cause for alarm. He pocketed his wand and set about at once, figuring he had better at least make use of this time.

It took him a few tries peeking down different aisles before he found the right one, but eventually the familiar spine caught his eye, though it was in slightly better condition than the one he was more used to. His finger rested tensely on its corner, hesitating there a breath before he pulled it off and opened it with precision.

The copy he had been using for the past two years was not his, but the bookmark he had placed within its pages had been, though he supposed something so abandoned would by now be out of bounds of his ownership. Bookmark or no, he remembered what the width of the pages on either side of the part he now made should be, and he only had to flick through a few of them, heart beating despite himself, before he found the right chapter.

Kiaran James was not a prolific writer of any degree. In fact, the wizard seemed rather uneducated in all but one particular subject: the hunting of magical beasts and classification of the usefulness of their many varied collectibles. It was other witches and wizards who told him these uses mostly, and they had their own books on what to do with them, but Kiaran himself had gotten a rather bad reputation in particular for this book, which held no standards for sacred beast nor beloved pet. He had worked his way through a quarter of the world, poaching and dismantling anything he could get his hands on that might fetch him a pretty penny if he could find the right wizard with the right lack of scruples, before his arrest for the slaying of several protected species, which subsequently ended his career.

Severus dragged his finger across the crude print, skipping over paragraphs about feathers, tears, and talons, searching for the words he already knew in his head.

" _Blood - expert level, do not attempt. Phoenix feather, yes, very simple. Find them shed or set a trap with treats of fruit. Tears, easy. Blood – no. I find a phoenix in the mountains, I capture it, take its blood, and it sings to me a terrible song. Cuts my soul out with its voice and inspects it like I'm the animal. Does not like what it sees. Very bad curse. Could not move for the pain. Witch in town tells me a story. I write what she says to me here: "The phoenix on that mountain used to sing to this village in times of war to double their bravery. But if you have evil in your soul, if you dare to harm such a creature, then may Merlin have mercy on you. The song you hear will not be one of warmth and strength, but a curse for your most wicked actions." I never cried for a beast I slay before. Phoenix make my whole chest ache. Still aches when writing this. Can feel my soul burning me from inside out... Heavy bag of gold I get for selling feathers made me feel better."_

He quietly shut the book and placed it back on the shelf in one quick movement, turning away.

He had already known the words; known what he would read. It didn't stop the trembling from carrying up his spine out to his whole body.

The silent sound-dampening alcove suddenly seemed claustrophobic and he wandered back through the iron gates, closing them rather uselessly as their lock was still missing. Any moment now the phoenix woman could return with it, though. He tried to keep his face expressionless, but it felt like it was pulling too taut in places and achieving only a lifeless effect. He absently drifted across the room towards a section of shelves labeled Magical Creatures, though his only interest seemed to be in the blur of different colors as his eyes moved unseeing over them. Any pages here held only tales of the beautiful bird that burst into flame to live another day, sang with soul-lifting force, and healed with its tears. A beacon of hope in legends and a resistance to darkness. As far as he knew, the only detailed first-hand documentation of someone foolish enough to cross such a creature with an unworthy heart was in that book across the room.

He supposed he might have missed the part in the introduction of Freya Fawkes where Dumbledore had shared the information that all phoenixes were shapeshifters, but he hoped he hadn't, for it gave a sick new meaning to the information contained in that book. He couldn't quite focus too hard on atrocities committed over a century ago, however, as he was thinking more along the lines of why he had missed her full introduction in the first place.

This time he replayed his memory of the phoenix song from that night a month ago purposefully, straining with the effort to find some note of warmth or comfort, but all he felt was a coldness pass over his heart.

Perhaps it was for the better that he was trapped in this school on constant surveillance. Why had he thought for one moment that he could simply pick up his life, start a real job, and do something as inconceivable as move on? Why should Dumbledore trust him? His offer, that was more of an order because the other option was Azkaban, to come here had not been open arms of solace, but a more useful prison sentence than rotting in a cell. And it was no more than he deserved to be cornered here and hated by everyone, if, after all, he was irrevocably...

_You are mad if you ever thought any differently_ , a little voice in his mind prodded. _Look at all you've done..._

Wings beat somewhere overhead, and he was startled out of his thoughts, looking up wildly. The phoenix was out of sight however, and in turn, so was he, with a bookcase between them. He carefully peered around the corner, following the sound of wings passing directly to the restricted section. The bird swooped low and popped into a woman with a crack of flame, who landed and then held her hand out just in time to catch a padlock as it fell from the air.

He stared at her back in fear that she would suddenly start absently singing and discover him among the shelves when he inevitably broke down loudly at the first musical note, but all she did was hook the padlock back into its place and pull out her wand.

As he watched, she flicked her wrist and said aloud, " _Extivatio_!" The lock burst into flames. " _Shit_ —" Another flick of her wand and the fire wordlessly went out.

He blinked at this display with hollow detached bemusement, finding he no longer had any energy to be surprised at this point. If anything, this was a welcome distraction from his thoughts, which he was finding were too much for him to handle all at once. Spy for Dumbledore, really good actress, overly friendly; he didn't much care at the moment. If anything, pretending for a little bit sounded quite good right now, so long as he steered the conversation clear of any hymns or folk songs. At the moment, it was between her, or throwing himself into the lake.

Feeling rather bold, if not altogether completely desperate, he silently stepped out from his hiding place and crept up towards the middle of the room. The only sound was the jangle of chains and muttered curses increasing in their colorfulness.

He cleared his throat and spoke. "Actually, it takes a key."

The chains rattled against the metal bars as the woman jumped so hard that she looked to have smacked her forehead into the gate, whipping around in surprise. Her wide eyes looked him up and down apprehensively, as if even identified, he might still be a threat, but eventually her shoulders relaxed.

" _Se_ — er," she started and stopped almost immediately, the corners of her mouth switching from up to down as she searched for the allowed words.

"It's fine," he cut in. It didn't matter what she called him if their entire correspondence was false anyway. Whatever worked for appeasement. He even threw her an extra bone, adding as a pointed punctuation in a soothing voice, "Freya."

It was her turn to stare, showing no signs of even attempting to hide it, in visible confusion. The woman simply gaped at him suspiciously, hands behind her back as she held onto the padlock and chains.

"Err," she tried again, "alright? Severus, then?"

He shrugged his lack of concern, though inwardly he felt awkward at so easily handing over his name.

"Riiight... Okay."

She seemed reluctant to turn her back on him fully, even to finish her task, but he was the one eager to ease the tension now. He calmly walked towards the waist-high bookshelves holding up the iron fencing and leaned against them, where he would still be in her peripheral. Her eyes stayed on him the whole time, unconvinced. He found it a bit late for her to be acting apprehensive around him now, but whatever was raising her alarm was beyond him.

"Did you finish your reading? Because," she pointed to the padlock, "once I get this thing back on here, I'm not pulling that stunt again. Albus called me a delinquent."

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the lock and trying to imagine what tone the headmaster would have said such a comment in. "Yes, I got what I wanted."

She quirked a brow. "That fast?"

"Like I said before, I had already read it."

"Hm."

Whatever her thoughts were, she made no further comment on his reading habits, turning instead to raise her wand once again. She did not flick her wrist with such confidence this time, however, and after a moment of watching her merely stand in position, he saw her eyes peek towards him.

He jumped at the opportunity. "Take your time. Third time's the charm, anyway."

A shrewd look of contempt crossed her features for the first time and he couldn't hold back his self-satisfied smirk at getting to turn this scenario around on her.

"I can do it just fine, thank you very much," she said with a haughty raise of her nose.

"You can certainly curse like a Quidditch hooligan just fine at least," he retorted, and grinned fiendishly as she snapped to look at him, her face flushing red.

"I— You didn't hear that," she said, peering over her shoulder as if trying to make sure no one else was lurking in the shelves. Finding no one, she cast one more wary look his way, to which he raised his brows and looked towards the still waiting lock. She rolled her eyes, refocused herself, and repeated her statuesque display, wand held out inert.

A part of him was dying inside knowing that this was the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and not him. He wondered who would break first, her, the lock, or him because he couldn't stand watching someone be so abysmal at magic that all it took was an audience of one to render them immobile.

"You... are surely joking, right?" he asked.

She huffed and shot him another look. Seemingly, she was giving up, as she pocketed her wand. But instead of turning away from the lock, she held up her empty hand in a gesture, and snapped.

At the sound of her fingers, with an accompanying small spark like flint being hit, the lock clicked into place at once. She turned to face him fully, displaying her work with both palms up. "As you can see, I can in fact do it just fine, thank you."

He leaned forward with interest, as if he could replay what indeed he had seen. "Wandless magic. You're more skilled without, than with?"

"That's correct."

"So... that would mean," he turned his keen eyes back to her and watched her face tighten, "you're not a witch after all."

She tucked her hair neatly behind her ear as if unfazed. "Nor am I a beast, except to wizards ignorant to the truth of the matter. Or, just very ignorant ones." She raised her brows pointedly at him but he didn't blink.

"I believe the ministry standard on shapeshifting creatures still separates their more beastly forms into the correct category," he said coolly.

"You would know exactly what the ministry sorts everyone into, wouldn't you?"

He felt his mouth twist sourly, ever so slightly. "The history of classifications is very complex. It's good to know, as not all rules are followed in a precise manner."

"Yes, I'm sure _that's_ why you know. Very astute," she commented, nodding sarcastically. "Most human-like magical creatures have the intelligence to be classified as 'being', even shapeshifters in their beast forms, and yet, the ministry has exceptions."

"Exceptions based on how deadly they are to actual humans," he interjected.

Perhaps it had been a poor choice of words when speaking to such a creature that the ministry had put into the classification of 'highly dangerous'. The look she gave him seemed to dare him to keep talking so she could snap her fingers and lock his jaw as tightly as the padlock, and he wouldn't exactly put it passed someone to want some kind of revenge after he had fired a curse off at them before.

He pursed his lips together and she flashed him a tight smile.

Any contempt she might have held though seemed only to be surface level as her face easily relaxed back into her placid self. "My, you're very fun to talk to," she remarked with barely veiled sarcasm as her eyes cast away from him. "Don't let me stop you any longer if you wanted to get back to reading — though your options are limited now."

He couldn't help the little flip of his stomach at the indication that he was perhaps failing at making conversation. He could nod his head and provide quotes of information from books near endlessly, but he relied heavily on someone to be more interested in hearing the sound of their own voice rather than take the lead. It didn't much help that she was, underneath all the things he could recite full essays about, a woman about his age, which he could recite nothing about.

Considering her suggestion, he surveyed the shelves around them, full of books he had already read, read multiple times, or deemed wholly uninteresting if not altogether useless. Even the restricted section was a much-watered down version of things he had read while out of school. And he did not want to be thinking about what was in there currently.

But here before him, raising her neat brows in a questioning look, was a creature that had been hiding her identity, and that of her species presumably, from the greater population for an untold amount of time. A fresh book with an un-cracked spine; and though she seemed to guard her secrets carefully, she undoubtedly had many. The most concerning of which he would never dare ask directly, but perhaps if he played his cards right, he could get the answer without having to reveal anything from his end. It was an unwritten challenge that he was curious to pursue.

"How old are you?" He tried to make his voice sound off-handed, but her face still looked surprised at the sudden question, or perhaps that he had chosen to talk to her at all. She seemed to appreciate the change in topic, though.

"Nearing a hundred, and yourself?" Her question went unanswered as she had to quickly address his disbelieving expression. "Phoenix years."

He blinked at her. "Phoenix years," he repeated.

She nodded sincerely.

He was about to argue, his eyes scrutinizing her perfectly youthful face, when he thought better of it. It was best practice to choose one's battles carefully.

"Twenty-one," he said casually as he moved on to more pressing matters, "and in a hundred years your wand magic is still that bad?" He hadn't meant for the comment to be quite so scathing, but the damage to her jolliness had been done.

"Albus has only been teaching me this past year, alright?"

No, this was certainly not alright, as it was unbelievable. "You've..." He blinked, licked his lips, and tried again. "Forgive me, did you just say that you, a professor, have only been practicing—"

"Look, I'm not that hopeless!" Her voice seemed earnestly defensive. Apparently eager to prove her point, she took out her wand again and shot him one last challenging look before she seemed to vanish under an invisible curtain with a silent flick.

He peered into the spot she had been, semi-certain what spell this was. With one cautiously outstretched finger, he reached the solid invisible force in the air that he had correctly guessed, and drew a small circle on it. Like popping a soap bubble, it disappeared, revealing the wand that had recant the spell, and the caster looking smug.

"An excessively strong shield charm," he remarked without praise. "You would do well in Charms then, but it says nothing about your abilities to accurately describe or teach the Dark Arts."

She met his leveled gaze with a questioning look, appearing to size him up. "You really think Albus would hire a teacher who wasn't fully capable?"

He shrugged. "Who knows?" If he was willing to hire an ex-Death Eater, all bets were off.

If he didn't know any better, the woman seemed to be unsure of the answer herself. A small crease formed in her brow as she stared thoughtfully at a patch of sunlight on the floor.

He was reminded of his lesser performing more affluent classmates that had, during 5th year, discovered for the first time that their family's connections would not be there during the O.W.L.'s to help them pass. The attempt he made to keep his lip from visibly curling was half-hearted. Life certainly was determined to carry on the asinine mechanisms of school-aged idiocy.

"Must be nice," he said not without a touch of bitterness in his voice, "to have fallen into the good graces of the headmaster."

She snapped out of her reverie and frowned at him. "Excuse me? I've been with Albus well before he was headmaster." She didn't seem phased by his highly skeptical look and continued on with a small sigh. "He believes I was the right person to tap for the job, so, I suppose I'll do fine."

He tried with no small effort to ignore that he had just heard that Dumbledore specifically chose someone that had trouble with wand magic over him to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.

So then, she was at least following orders from Dumbledore in some way. It felt like a pathetically tiny puzzle piece considering all that he did not know, especially given that he didn't quite trust her word. However, if she was telling the truth about her age and her history with Dumbledore, that meant she was indeed the same bird that had truly _always_ been by his side, and held untold secrets about his past as well. Not that he was still in the position to be as thirsty for any information he could get on the old wizard now that he had no one to return that message to, but the rest was an interesting story to consider all its own.

It could be assumed that the phoenix had been with the master — or whatever he was to her — during two separate wizarding wars, at the heart of each. And as he knew from his experience with the most recent one, the phoenix was indeed a particularly good defense against the dark arts, given all the times it, or she, had saved people on her side of things. At the least, her coming from such a background and excelling at protective magic would make for an intriguing _base_ to _learn_ the correct wand magic in all of its varied intricacies — he still held heavy misgivings about her actual aptitude to do any of this, much less teach it. As well as the legality of her practicing wand magic, and owning a wand in the first place; though he supposed he didn't have much room to talk when his own wand would have been snapped had the ministry gotten a chance to look at its history.

"What kind of wand are you using?" He had merely been wondering aloud, still caught up in his thoughts, but the look she gave him brought his eyes up. She looked like he might have asked for a vial of her blood. "I just want to see it," he added defensively.

"Sorry," she mumbled apologetically, pulling out the wand in question. "It just took a long time to... Well, I've been through five already — they kept exploding, you see — and this is the only one that's worked." He walked closer to get a better look, but it was pulled equally far again as she stepped back the same distance.

He looked down at her shuffled feet, then back up. She stared back at him with apprehension.

"Well, can I see it, or not?"

"I—Yeah, yes, sure, of course." She screwed up her face in determination and took an unhelpful half step towards him, looking more like she was being mugged and trying to hand off her wallet.

He was beginning to feel as if he had sprouted horns, or perhaps his soul was so repugnant it deflected more pure beings. He whisked this thought out of his mind, though it did stir an idea. Looking passed her held out hand, he took in her wary eyes. Out of reach from the direct light, they could pass as a particularly striking hazel, the whole effect reminding him of another magical beast. It hardly seemed logical given that she had run up to him without hesitation so many times, but then again, if he twisted the definition of 'logic' just a bit...

Slowly, while holding her gaze, he emptied all the thoughts in his head to a calm poise and took deliberate steps forward.

"May I?" Now he was actually within range to get a good look at her wand, but he kept his eyes on hers, waiting for a heartbeat to see if this was the correct move.

She looked even more startled than before, and her face turned pink. Well, that certainly was not how hippogriffs reacted, but in any case, she didn't attack him or back up this time. Instead she ducked her head down and he could finally go back to his query.

"And what wood is that?" It looked to be light and ashen; overall, a very plain-looking match for its owner.

She kept her eyes down, and whatever she was thinking was not reflected in her benign tone. "Cypress. And I went through Spruce, English Oak, Blackthorn... and two others that I couldn't even get to work before Ollivander finally thought to try this."

"Couldn't master the Blackthorn? That's not surprising." She finally looked back up at him with a rather unamused face, but he only smiled mischievously and pulled out his own wand. "It requires true talent."

Her annoyance was cleared away as her mouth popped open to marvel at the handsome black wand. "Oh! I'm so jealous, I really wanted that one."

His own expression was in turn reversed. "Really?" He couldn't imagine why a phoenix would be drawn a wand wood reputed to be powerful at the Dark Arts.

"Yes! I like the gin." He blinked at her in exasperation. "What? It's good."

"The fruit making good gin hardly seems relevant to the function of the wand."

Her brows raised at this and she sounded amused. "You don't think so? The knowledge that it was a good wand-making wood didn't sprout from nowhere. Surely appreciation for the tree came from the fruit first, and wood second. Having a history with people probably helped to make such a strong magical connection in the first place."

His mouth twisted at this figurative explanation, thinking it highly unlikely he could better bond with his wand if he was an alcoholic. It did sound like the kind of nonsense a wandmaker would say, though. "I suppose... If you want to unravel everything carefully researched and documented on wandlore and make it into crass poetry instead."

"Well," she said with a twirl of her own wand, "you can't rely on everything you read in books to tell the whole story, anyway."

His black eyes flicked up to search her face at this comment, wondering if she was alluding to something she shouldn't have seen, but she only shrugged.

He would rather rely on the harsh but unchangeable inked word than have to sift through that which was unknown.

"Speaking of not judging things at face value," he said evenly, changing the subject, "I'm curious what that wand has inside it."

The neat little wand was flipped back and forth, giving its owner the appearance of a cat twitching its tail. "Are you?"

"Perhaps it's a stupid question."

"Perhaps it is."

Not taking her eyes off his, she put the wand between both palms and gave it a slow turn. A low-burning flame leapt from one end, snaked down the length in waves, and died as it reached the other, leaving the wood behind perfectly unscathed.

He nodded; his thoughts confirmed. "Is that impervious nature from the wood, or the phoenix feather?"

She looked down at her wand. "Probably both? I don't know, I haven't a clue about wandlore."

"And yet you make claims about it," he remarked.

"I make claims about things that I know are true to life, such as the natural forces of magic," she said with a shrug. "I don't care to know much about wandlore than I have to, anyway. Ollivander is a nice enough wizard, but..."

"But he pulls too hard when he harvests tail feathers?" He offered with a sardonic grin.

She gave him a withering look. "As if I would let someone other than Albus lay a hand on me." This only made her sound even more like a prized and pampered pet bird that had gained the power of speech, but he kept this thought to himself.

"So, you haven't donated any feathers to any wand shops then?"

Her stare seemed to drop several degrees colder before the corners of her mouth were forcefully propped up in a mock grin. He waited for several seconds, grinning pleasantly back, but she didn't reply.

He took the measure of her expression and, deciding she wasn't quite pressed to the limit, chanced another probing question that had been on his mind.

"Perhaps other phoenixes have been donating instead?"

Again, her only answer was the same smile, but then he hadn't expected her to pull out a carefully kept record of every living phoenix and hand it over. It was just a test to see how much she was guarding, and besides, he had an ace up his sleeve for this line of inquiry.

His fingers drummed over his wand and he carefully lifted it aloft as if pondering idly. "Sorry," he said, keeping his voice as light and casual as he could, "it's just that I was curious because—"

All his carefully learned protection spells were rendered useless as his wand was snatched out of his hand so fast that he almost cursed out loud his own stupidity at not thinking the woman would of course do just that.

" _Excuse you_ —" He tried to grab it back but she was stepping backwards from him rapidly, even as her eyes were fixated on the black wand held in her grasp. "You can't just take it! I—"

But before he could resort to physically grappling for it back, she had done something that made his breath catch. The same trick of flame, from one end snaking to the other, was done to his own wand now, and he could only grimace in horror at the sight of his prized possession in such a state. The second the fire died he shot his hand out and reclaimed what was his.

" _Has nobody trained you_ ," he said with unrestrained anger, " _not to touch other people's things?_ "

Her expression was smooth and cool despite his words. "I could say the same to you."

His lungs filled with air perhaps to carry on his reprimanding, but he couldn't find anything to say to this as the meaning turned over in his head. He looked down at his wand, which was thankfully unharmed, but unfamiliarly warm in his hand. His eyes rose back at once.

The gaze she leveled on him was enigmatic. She seemed to be taking the measure of his very heart and soul and he didn't much like it, though he was considering her with equal curiosity. Finally, she let out a very long sigh through her nose and allowed a tiny crease of annoyance to show between her brows.

"I'll have that Ollivander man's bloody business license," she muttered darkly.

He raised his brow, tilting his head at her in genuine surprise. "Really?"

"Really what? His business license? Oh no, you're right, I think it would be simpler to just burn down the shop."

He ignored this in his fixation. "I have your feather?" He had always been prideful of the rare elements of his wand, knowing few others with either, especially phoenix feathers. It was a shock that the source was standing right in front of him, looking distinctly peeved.

Her expression fully soured to a pinch that came off more comical than angry. "Tried to curse me with my own feather. I should take that wand back and give you tail feathers, and see how you like people plucking them out."

The corner of his mouth twitched, too bemused with this new knowledge to take her threat to heart. He held his wand aloft, looking at it in a new light before glancing back at her. He thoroughly enjoyed the look of utter annoyance that she displayed.

That was interesting. Not exactly what he had been hoping to learn about phoenixes, Dumbledore, or Freya Fawkes's role in his situation; but interesting, none the less.

If anything, hearing her speak without a smile plastered to her face just inclined him to believe that there was more depth to her, and specifically that it had been previously concealed. He wasn't quite sure yet which of these sides leaned more towards genuine, but he wasn't sure that it mattered, even if it was both. He was certain about her allegiance to Dumbledore, and if she was following his orders, the only kind of authenticity she would have towards himself would stop and end at anything the headmaster deemed reminiscent of his old Death Eater self. Which meant he still had that one strike point, but perhaps he could do something about that.

His focus aimed back towards her. She was absently combing her fingers through her hair in long slow strokes, winding it over her shoulder to her chest almost protectively. Her expression appeared softened, troubled by some far-away thought as she stared towards the middle of the room.

He adjusted his posture and lightly cleared his throat, hoping that playing into this atmosphere would be an advantage and not a detriment. "So," he began, keeping his voice low and trying very hard to keep any haughtiness out of it, "I cursed you with your own feather."

"Attempted to anyway," she said automatically, as if her daydreaming had been much less engrossing than he first thought. Her eyes glanced towards him without lifting her head, and her own smug smile appeared.

He let her have this small victory and continued. "Yes. Attempted... And did that spell not land because it was your own feather in my wand?"

The hazel eyes shifted out of his view again. "Hm..."

So, there was something there to conceal.

"Or," she piped up with forced cheer over his thoughts, "perhaps you're just rather bad at curses."

He answered her with a half-second raise of the corners of his mouth before returning to a stony stare. She couldn't dodge him forever, and if he didn't rise to her interjections, but ignored them, he could still push on.

"The feather might make sense," he mused aloud, trying to gauge her reaction from the corner of his eye, "but, then again, I had a different theory before learning about my wand core that might be more fitting."

"Well, you're quite clever, I'm sure you already know the answer."

He chewed his lip in mild annoyance, because obviously he didn't if he had to ask, and she was back to being particularly cagey.

"Many magical beasts," he stopped as the movement from her sharply turned head caught his eye, "erm — beings," he corrected, annoyed at his mistake, which was probably his own fault for constantly mentally comparing her to one particular category of creature, "are resistant to magic, in varying degrees."

She paused before bobbing her head a single time in agreement with this fact, but she had gone back to facing out towards the room instead of at him, unsmiling.

"So, it stands to reason that you would also be impervious... to a degree."

He thought for a moment she wasn't even going to respond to this, but then her eyes snapped up to his with a suddenness that made his posture stiffen. Startling him further out of his attempted casualness, she fully stepped up to him until he could clearly see the gold of her eyes again, glowing another warning in the afternoon light, and signaling that he had crossed some line.

She delivered a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Yes, Severus. The only magic that will work is that with the darkest of intent. So, next time, if you plan to attack me—"

"I don't," he said quickly, trying to keep his spine straight and not lean away. She was noticeably shorter than him, and he would not back up just because of a baseless accusation and her alarming gaze.

"No?" She didn't seem to be blinking.

"Of course not," he said evenly, matching her steadiness.

"What was that spell you tried to use on me, anyway?"

Well, that truth could at least be hidden easily with a lesser spell. "Silencing Charm. I just wanted you to shut up for a minute." In defiance of her interrogation, and to hide his nerves, he allowed a sneer to creep onto his features.

He watched one eyebrow raise skeptically, but her own smile seemed to be softening to a more playful one, as if she believed him.

"Rude," she said at last, cocking her head to one side, "but not very deadly."

"Right. Satisfied, then?" He waited for her to step back first, but she remained stubbornly in place, still peering at him with interest.

"Hm..."

He almost flinched as she raised a hand up to him then. Unable to fathom where its destination lay, his eyes followed, unnerved, but he apparently had ample time to figure this mystery out as she slowed her movement down to a crawl, raising up to the height of his chest and stopping inches away from actually touching him.

"What—"

But his question died on his lips as her hand closed to only a single finger, pointed directly at his heart, and he remembered her propensity for wandless magic and everything Kiaran James had written. As her finger swirled a small circle, just as his had done on her shield charm earlier, his heart seemed to flip over at command, though he was almost certain she hadn't done anything more than he had with the motion; it was just his body reacting in panic to the threat posed before it.

Maddeningly, she pulled her hand back, having done all of nothing but confuse and distract him as always. And, this time at least, deeply rattle him.

"Excellent," she nodded, and took two steps back. "Well, I'm glad you finally got to the point of what you wanted to ask for so long."

His head snapped up, still bewildered. "What?"

She tossed him an agitating look of understanding some secret he held, and he collected himself to stand up straighter. There was no way she could have actually seen his intentions.

"I was just trying to be polite and have a conversation," he said with conviction, if not open irritation at having his reasons doubted.

"And I appreciate it," she said, sounding just as genuine. "But if you wanted to know if you were in trouble for trying to curse me, you could have just jumped to that first."

He was trying to piece together how exactly she had jumped to this conclusion, but even as his brows knit in confusion, she spoke again.

"You aren't, by the way. I didn't even tell Albus."

His eyes narrowed further. He tried to keep the simmering distrust clear of his expression, but it was fine to show a little doubt.

"Honest," she implored, fully quashing her smile and casting wide eyes of purest innocent gold at him, as if he would simply forget the dangerous look that had been there a moment ago.

He decided to simply ignore this, looking away moodily. He was irritated enough at her thorough shut-down of his questioning and baiting him into some stupid trick. He didn't feel like giving attention to blatant lies meant to lull him into a false sense of security, which only served to remind him that he was talking to someone who was more than likely performing a full evaluation of his nature for report. It didn't help that she seemed to have uncanny perception, even if it was just a bit off the mark. At least, he desperately hoped it was just perception.

In any case, he had undoubtedly expended his chances at getting any information out of her, and that was enough to be cross about. However, he had gleaned some new bits of knowledge today, at least enough to think over.

His mind wandered back to the passage in the book by the crazed poacher, wondering if his wording was accurate or simply a quirk of his obvious stupidity. If a phoenix could see his soul... then what? What would it see? Had her little motion with her finger been some kind of magic to reveal the presence of any lies, or was it just a trick to mess with him? Surely this was the case, because if she had the capability to do something so powerful so easily, it would defy the natural laws of magic. That wouldn't make any sense...

"Oi."

He looked up, rudely pulled out of his thoughts to a curious expression different from her harsh critical gaze. She was grinning as if at his expense but as he self-consciously checked himself over, he couldn't understand, and this only seemed to further amuse her.

"Can I help you?"

She pursed her lips and let out a laugh through her nose. "Oh no, I'm not going down that road again," she said with dark amusement, crossing her arms behind her back and shifting her feet so that her hair tumbled over her shoulder with the tilt of her posture. "I just wanted to say, I..." Her voice trailed off and her eyes followed, losing a bit of her smile. "Well, I—I'll see you at the feast, yes?"

He waited a moment, searching her expression in confusion. "Obviously."

He checked the clock on the wall, but apart from being surprised at how long he had spent here, he noted he still had plenty of time until he needed to be getting fussed about when to arrive at the staff table – preferably as late as possible so he would be less likely to get dragged into conversation as they waited for the students to file in. He looked back to her, taking in the way her feet were shuffling to angle herself towards the door, and realized he was being very politely ditched by his entertaining distraction. He also had the sudden awareness of how quiet the library was, and that he hadn't said anything after getting lost in his thoughts. Actually, he recalled, he had brushed her off, and she seemed to be just piping up to say goodbye.

He straightened up, clearing his throat. "Actually, I should—"

"Get going?"

"Yes."

"Yes, me too," she agreed, nodding in relief even as she was backing away. "I have to change into my proper robes – the ones with the keys."

"Right," he remarked dryly, having almost forgotten. "And I should go request one since mine seems to have gotten lost."

"Ha." Her smile faltered comically under his stare, and she grimaced an apology. "Sorry. Err, well, be seeing you."

He let her run along ahead so he could walk out in idle solitude, realizing even his guard had just abandoned him.

—

Tiny mechanical parts ticked down the seconds as Severus sat, fingers netted over his mouth, staring.

He had placed the small metal, slightly dented, alarm clock on his office desk, and was now transfixed with its hands as they made their way around the hour with unnerving speed.

He could just go now, as he had already passed by the Great Hall and seen that it was newly dressed and set for the feast, but the staff table was empty. That was fifteen minutes ago, and now, surely, enough time would have passed for him to miss anyone in the halls, but still get to his seat without seeming late.

None of the antique wood legs of his desk chair creaked as he remained perfectly seated, hands still folded.

It wasn't that he was suddenly finding himself nauseous, certainly not, it was another matter entirely that was keeping him cooped up in his office rather than getting up and going where he needed to; chiefly, that he had only gone over his list of duties ninety-nine times, and a round hundred was what was needed, surely.

_Prefects; first-years; Quidditch captains; don't curse any of the students if they bring up your dead friends or rivals, because your tenuous pact with Albus Dumbledore will snap like a twig and you'll be sacked and sent to Azkaban where your soul will be tormented, but you perhaps don't even have one, so what's the bother; but also if a student starts mouthing off, you get to deduct points, which is fun; fifth-years need their O.W.L.'s vetted; Hogsmeade permission forms; and_ —

He was beginning to wonder how he had gotten any sleep last night given how loud the small clock was capable of being as it ticked on and on. He finally moved, with a jerking motion, slapping the little clock facedown and getting up out of his chair. He was out the door, locking it, and down the hall before he could let his mind disturb him any longer.

The Great Hall was already livelier than earlier, with all the floating candles fully lit, the castle ghosts hovering around here and there, and, he saw in the minuscule glance he allowed himself, the staff table mostly full, but not entirely. He kept his eyes directly in front of where he was walking as he cut straight to the nearest end and around the back, walking for the first time to take his seat as a professor. Head of Hufflepuff, Sprout; Head of Ravenclaw, Flitwick; the headmaster's empty highbacked golden chair; Deputy Headmistress and Head of Gryffindor, McGonagall—

He stopped behind the chair that would have been – should have been – for the fourth Head of House, himself. Instead, he looked down in disgust at the back of a particularly striking head of fiery red hair. He didn't even bother arguing with this, as she probably had some special 'Dumbledore's Pet' ranking that allowed her to sit nearer the headmaster than one of his own Heads of House. The chair on her right was empty, and that was close enough.

"And in particular, what you need to be doing—Oh, I say, how rude!"

As he pulled out his claimed chair and sat, the wizard on his right made a show of looking overly appalled, adjusting a stuffy-looking ascot.

"The lady and I were having a conversation here, you know!"

The lady in question was sitting with her elbow on the table, leaning on her hand like a student listening to a particularly dull lecture, but still trying to pass the class. Her hazel eyes slid over to Severus, and in greeting, popped her eyebrows up once without a word. Apparently, it would have been a waste to attempt to speak.

"As I was saying here, dear, as I was saying, I—oh wait, where was I?"

Freya seemed reluctant to prompt him, opening and closing her mouth, but what she finally settled on was, "Actually, I do think it's rude to talk across someone at the table, so perhaps—"

"Oh, nonsense," the wizard went on, "this man interrupted us first, so we have every right to carry on. There, see, he's leaned back. Now then!"

Severus was vaguely recollecting that he was the newer Astronomy teacher from his later years, and he hadn't had a class with him. He was also busy vaguely recollecting that in a few moments he would be introduced to the entire school and they might know him either as 'Death Eater' or 'weird kid from 7th year', and couldn't care less what was going on to either side of him. This was one of those moments where keeping his hair long and at the sides of his face came in handy for shutting out distractions, though he could still make out the blur of faces in his peripherals, sat back as he was to stay out of the conversation.

"Oh, I've remembered! Right, what you need to be doing is charting beyond your sun sign, dear. There are other planets we are born under that hold deeper meaning than what's on the surface. What did you say your sign was again? Right, right, you didn't. But surely a fire sign, of course. Regal Leo, no doubt, or perhaps an aloof Sagittarius—"

"Cancer."

" _Merlin's beard!_ " The sheer volume at which he made this outburst had Severus reaching for the golden goblet sat beside his empty plate to fill it with wine, as the realization set in that he was sat between not one, but two obnoxious people, though one of them seemed to be greatly winning that race currently. As he poured his serving and then leaned back, the other man dodged and weaved to speak passed him. "Surely not, I would think!"

"Err," Freya stammered, "I do believe so, actually."

The astronomy professor seemed to think he could not only talk directly over Severus, but gesture into the window of space he had to stare out over the table. He glared at the intrusion, but the man was busy beckoning at Freya as if she held the secrets to the universe. He held his goblet to his mouth and resumed his detached staring.

"Madame, could you possibly be mistaken?"

"About... about my birth?"

He nodded frantically.

"Err, well, I don't remember much about being... born, true enough. But I haven't heard any tales of madmen with astrolabes skulking about making sure I was cooked long enough to get a cursed star chart, so, I think that's correct."

The tiny snort of derision he had made was echoed into his wine goblet, and her eyes spotted him out for it. For the briefest moment he saw the corner of her mouth twitch up and realized he was on the outside looking in to what she would normally be doing to him. It still wasn't all that amusing, and he broke the eye contact, going back to staring out over the empty tables.

" _Cursed star chart_ ," the astronomer said in an emphatic hush. "My dear woman, do you think that's what you are? Cursed with a water sign, although you are a beast of fire... What could be worse?"

He caught the indignant way her mouth popped open at the word 'beast', but she smothered it with a smile. "Perhaps there are a few things in life that could be worse," she said with effort.

"Hmm, yes, a scant few... But what could this curse possibly mean? I'm no diviner, myself, we should have to ask the Divination teacher. Wait here, I'll look for her—"

"It means she is weak to water."

Both heads on his left and right turned to look at him in surprise. His eyes glanced back and forth between them, almost regretting speaking up, but knowing he was saving himself from a fate worse than a bad star chart if Divination got roped into this.

The loudmouth man was about to speak up but Severus cut him off. "Perhaps Freya would like to give the explanation herself?" She looked more shocked than if he had told her that her moon sign was in opposition to her teaching position.

"Err... Yes." But instead of speaking, she slid her fingers neatly behind her ear, and when she held them out again, a tiny red feather was between them. As if performing a party trick, she pressed it into the condensation on the wine bottle at the center of the table, where it soaked up the moisture and desaturated to a sad dull brown, shriveling. "As you can see," she said, holding out her hand.

His black eyes stared at the stuck feather, feeling an odd sort of kinship with the bedraggled thing as the wine settled in his empty churning stomach.

"I say! Now that," proclaimed the astronomy professor, "is a curse! Whatever do you do in rainy weather?"

She scoffed lightly. "You wouldn't catch me outside with a cloud in the sky."

"And what would you do, say, if someone spilled a glass of water on you?"

"I'd roast him and serve him up during the feast myself."

"Ah..." Her words combined with her wide smile seemed to give the man pause for once before he plowed on again in his simpering way. "Well, I'm sure you are quite capable of doing so, madame, as beautiful and—I mean as strong and— powerful as you are of course!"

Severus raised his goblet to his lips again, taking a prolonged sip as the astronomer went on.

"But truly, the planets are not to be trifled with—if you are ever feeling the need to have your place in the world examined, please do stop by the astronomy tower and visit sometime. Preferably at night, while the stars are out in full force."

Curiosity to watch a disaster take place won out over his attempts to ignore everything around him, and he glanced to his left, trying with effort to keep his brow from raising to his hairline. The current look in the phoenix's eyes made the warnings she had flashed at him earlier look like playful flirtations, shining more sharply than all the golden knives in the hall, and he wondered if he was about to witness her last words become a fiery reality. He would much prefer roast turkey to astronomer, but it would be entertaining none the less. But apart from her smile starting to look like it was strained to the point of pulling a muscle, her only reaction was to glance back at him with a half-second of pleading in her eyes.

The corners of his lips turned up and he went back to staring out over the empty hall, thoroughly enjoying letting the silence hang.

"Ah, well," the other wizard finally spoke up again, clearing his throat, apparently unruffled, "tonight would be a bad night, but by next week the moon should be full, so perhaps your radiance would—"

"Where _is_ the Divination teacher?" He caved before Freya did, finding his limit at being trapped between a conversation ended with it turning into a humiliating pick-up attempt full of enough disgusting smarm to grease a turkey.

The astronomer was again shocked to see that the specter at the feast he was speaking through was in fact a real human, but his simple mind seemed to latch on willingly enough to this distraction. He cast one cursory look around to the end of the long staff table where an empty chair sat still tucked in before turning back with a sigh. "Oh, she rarely leaves her quarters for meals unfortunately; she's quite an odd duck."

"How sad," Severus said with no interest. "Perhaps you should go fetch her and bring her down then? Such a shame to miss the start-of-term feast."

"Oh, yes, I would love to meet her," Freya cut in enthusiastically picking up this dropped line, "just like you were saying, right, Mr. Powers?"

"Ah..." Mr. Powers looked between the two of them, with his eyes lingering on the woman. "Right, true, it would be nice, but the students will be arriving—oh, but I suppose I have plenty of time before they're all seated. I'll just be a minute, dear!" And he hurried out of his chair as two identical sighs of relief followed at the table.

He thought he had finally managed to secure peace and quiet, but of course now that the exhaustingly obnoxious person had left, he still had the lesser of two evils to contend with. Freya was still leaning on her elbow, peeling the stray feather from its final resting place on the wine bottle, when she spoke absently.

"Do you reckon he knows?"

"Knows what?" He was feeling the creep of jitters settle back in as the talking around the table grew more excited, and he thought he heard the noise of carriages from outside the windows.

She leaned in a fraction closer to him and he looked up to see her hand covering the side of her mouth to whisper to him. "Do you reckon he knows there's a difference between Astronomy and Astrology?"

He stared at her, watching the way her brows quirked up in seemingly genuine concern for a potentially brain-addled professor.

And then he laughed. It was only a quick snort and then his hand pressed over his smile to hide it, but nonetheless, it was a laugh. He couldn't quite figure out if he was just so nervous that he was reacting abnormally, or if it was the wine, or if it truly was hilarious to imagine the ditzy man walking into an interview with the entirely wrong impression and being hired for a job way over his head, or if it was that he was potentially just using astrology as a front to chat up women half his age, but whatever it was, the picture was highly amusing.

He smoothed his grin back into a stony line with his fingers as he caught Freya looking at him like he had perhaps gone addle-brained as well.

"Well," he said, lightly clearing his throat, "it wouldn't be Dumbledore's most out-there hire."

"Oh, very true. Why, I heard," Freya dropped her voice to a mock conspiratorial tone, apparently riding off this glimpse of his amusement, "he's hired a _Death Eater_ this year. Can you _imagine_?"

He played along with a sardonic grin, but still peeked out of the corner of his eye passed Freya to check if McGonagall was paying any attention before he replied. "I heard that he hired a peacock that could talk," he leaned forward to finally sit up straight and claim his spot at the table without someone trying to talk over him. "Trained it up himself. And when the ministry saw it, they had to come up with a new classification of beast: 'highly obnoxious.'"

Staring smugly ahead, hands folded neatly in front of him, he could just make out the sour smile on her face. As he cast his eyes across the hall to the main entrance expectantly, the eccentric headmaster himself strode in and made his way to the table, distracting the woman before she could reply to him. His stomach gave a little flip as the first students could be heard breaking ground in the Entrance Hall, announced by the creak of the heavy oak doors and many quick footsteps on polished stone — and suddenly everything seemed to be coming into place very fast.

But even as Freya broke her own rules of dinner table politeness to shout her greetings to the headmaster over McGonagall's pointed hat, and the deputy headmistress got up from her seat with a huff to make her way towards a stool with a similar but vastly grubbier looking hat, and more and more students took their seats, he found the feeling in his stomach was a much more bearable flutter of excitement. It was hard to remain cooped up in his own agitated mind when everything around him was alight with wonder; a living buzz of enthusiasm.

His composure held steady through the sorting, welcoming what would be his own House's newest students with applause, and continued through the feast. The only exciting thing that happened while everyone was tucking in was when McGonagall tried to politely offer Freya the tray of roast turkey, making the phoenix woman let out a noise of dismay as the headmistress profusely apologized; and Professor Powers, having returned with seemingly more knowledge about Cancers gleaned from the Divination teacher and attempting to continue his conversation with the cursed woman, was dismayed to find that the Potions teacher, having properly introduced himself, had an odd habit of leaning backwards and forwards in his chair in just such a way that the astronomer gave up trying to talk passed him in a huff half-way through the second course.

As the final desserts were magically whisked away and the talking died down to a satisfied murmur, Dumbledore rose to give his speech. It was much the same as he had said to the staff the previous day, and Severus missed half of what he said in his anticipation for the more pertinent introductory parts. Freya was given her moment of applause, and — to his great surprise and relief, his own name elicited the proper reaction, even from the staff. Though he could have sworn it seemed like less noise than the amount of people sitting at the table, he was too focused on looking at another table, who were the happiest to join in greeting their new Slytherin Head of House. He was sure the students themselves were just too clueless to know any better, but all the same, it wasn't the awful silence that he had been expecting, so he would take what he could get with appreciation. He had a single solitary moment to feel pride at his new responsibility and bask in normalcy.

There was a tug on the left sleeve of his robes as he got up to leave for his duties in the Slytherin common room, and he turned back.

"Good luck!"

He stared down at her smiling face, every bit as deceptively cheery and overly friendly, and found he couldn't fully hold down the corners of lips. But he also couldn't stop himself from wanting to try for one more jab before leaving.

"I won't be needing your luck, thank you. I'll do just fine on my own."

* * *

_— *** —_


	3. Light Sleeper

_— *** —_

* * *

" _Watch where you're going!_ "

"Sorry! Sorry, sir!"

There was a commotion as the student he had just run into around the corner attempted to pick up his scales twice before managing to not drop them on the third try.

" _Get to your dorm!_ "

"But... but Professor, my class," the boy stammered, still trying to collect his things even as Severus was already rushing away from him.

"It's break time!"

_I hate it here. I hate it_ , he grumbled to himself, and his stomach answered him with one of its own. He carried on his hurried strides to the Great Hall, hoping he still had enough time to get in a full breakfast and do the rest of his break time work as well.

His sleep schedule had not, as he had hoped, magically improved through the power of wishful thinking, and so far, he was five for five on missed morning meals, having to cram in time to eat during morning break lest he repeat his first day, on which he had gone until halfway through lunch period without eating.

He was exhausted to the bone and hungry for even such a scrap, but it was anger that was propelling him forward currently, with one single person on his mind. His teeth scraped his tongue bitterly as if even just thinking her name was cause to scrub the surface clean.

If he was thinking clearly, with a full stomach and a restful night's sleep, he would have the peace of mind needed to take a step back, breathe easy, and marvel that he had gotten through nearly a whole week of teaching without attacking a single person. Truly a praise-worthy feat for him in his given state. And, moody thoughts not-with-standing, it really had been a good week.

Apprehension had gnawed at him the first night he had addressed the Slytherin common room, noting more than a handful of faces that looked at him like wolf-pups ready to gleefully fight tooth and nail for whatever secrets he was holding. Evidently, his prediction that parents had grabbed the ear of their offspring and passed on things beyond their understanding had come true, though he hadn't been so acute as to predict exactly what tone that knowledge would have been passed between them. Of the two students whose last names he recognized, one's father was in Azkaban, and the other had narrowly escaped the same fate by claiming to have been under the Imperius Curse, which Severus knew for a fact that he had not been. He was sure they weren't the only students whose parents he might recognize if given a line-up of voices, but even without that inherited predisposition, he suspected some of the intently staring eyes simply assumed through sinister imagination that he had knowledge they would want. He had been much more worried about the scathing eyes blaming him for association with a war he had not been near the front lines of, but Dumbledore's words were proving truer, and more troublesome: there were still students swaying towards a path that he himself had taken, one that they couldn't possibly comprehend the absolute cost of.

But four days had come and gone without so much of a peep from his House students, despite the fact that he was sure he had seen gossiping taking place behind his back in the halls and, he thought, the fear in the voices of the pupils he reprimanded for various misdeeds sounded annoyingly real. The Slytherins, though cognizant of his like-mindedness and appreciative of his favoritism, seemed to view him correctly as a teacher outside of their bounds to speak freely with.

It wasn't until today that one of them had worked up the nerve.

"Professor?"

The tapping of chalk against the blackboard stopped, leaving the only sound in the echo-y classroom the distant noise of students scurrying away down the hall.

Severus paused for a moment, steeling himself, before turning towards the door, where a sixth-year boy was shuffling his feet.

"Yes...?" He surveyed the boy, running through the jumbled mess of names that had been crammed into his brain over the week. He recalled this one easily enough, as he had seen it on a much shorter list of Quidditch players, signed by himself when the captain had brought the letter to him. "Mr. Wells, is it?"

"Yes, sir, that's right. Err..."

"Well, don't just stand there. Come in." He turned back to his chalk write-up for his next class, hoping this was about how much homework he had just assigned them and nothing more.

The boy pulled the door shut behind him when he re-entered, and Severus let out a steadying sigh as he accepted this sign that this talk was about more than homework. His student seemed polite enough to wait while he finished writing, but he was only prolonging the unpleasant inevitable. Try as he might to pretend like he was a normal teacher and there was a brick wall between ' _Professor_ ' and ' _(ex-)Death Eater_ ', he had known from the start children had a way of seeing brick walls as nothing more than something to haphazardly climb over. It was only a matter of time before one of them got curious enough. At this point he was just glad it was happening after class, and not during.

The boy cleared his throat as Severus set his chalk down, but he did not turn around to face him. Apparently speaking to his professor's back was an easier option for what he had to say though, as he spoke up without encouragement.

"Professor, I was wondering..."

_Of course you were._

"...about something you said at the start of class."

He squinted at the dusty board, wondering if he had perhaps been mistakenly paranoid. Slowly turning to face him, the boy looked like nothing more than a curious student, albeit rather nervous. Then again, most of the students seemed to have adopted a bit of this energy around him, only most weren't in his own House.

"Oh?" At the very least, if someone was nervous to ask him something, he wasn't excited to find out why.

"Yes, well, it's just that—that thing you said, about the, erm..."

"Spit it out, if you would, Mr. Wells."

"Yes- Yes, sir." The silver and green tie around the boy's neck seemed uncomfortable as he swallowed, but he was taking a steadying breath of his own. Severus noticed a determination in his eyes when he looked up next, making him even more apprehensive about what he had to say.

"When you were talking about controlling what could hurt us, about the potion-"

"You mean the highly acidic potion that could have burned your fellow students' hands off had they continued to play around so lackadaisically?"

"Yes," he said, boyish features coming out as he grinned smugly. "Good job keeping order and taking points from them, sir. Much deserved."

He did not join in the gloating over House rivalries, feeling more like he was only being buttered up for what had still yet to be asked. He had only even interrupted to hopefully divert the conversation towards school-related topics exclusively.

He boy's face fell as his comment went ignored, but as Severus turned his head pointedly toward the clock on the wall, the boy jumped back on track with zeal.

"It's just that—what you said—it made me think."

"It is the joy of any teacher to hear such words," he said with a slight sneer.

"I—I guess so... but, sir, how you talked about... about _potions_ ," he put unnecessary emphasis on the word, casting a meaningful look that was not hindered by the cautioning one he received back, "that they can be highly dangerous, but they can be controlled, and manipulated or something, and even deadly ones have their proper uses..."

"Not a very accurate retelling of what exactly I said, but go on."

But the look in the boy's eyes, wide with anticipation as he honed in on what he was trying to say, made him wish he hadn't prompted at all.

"I was wondering if you felt that... that people could be manipulated in the same way so that someone, err, deadly, could hide in plain sight?"

The eager look on his face melted into regretful shock instantly. He was backing up before Severus had even fully rounded his desk, but there was no running from his professor's outraged glare as he stepped up to him.

"And where," he said through his teeth, drawing up to his full height to leer down at the boy, "would you get that idea from?"

There was no hesitation in spilling the truth now. "F-from Defense Against—from Miss—Professor Fawkes," he stammered, back to his nervousness.

" _Excuse me?_ "

"In class—on our first day—she was, Professor Fawkes was talking about how... how the Dark Arts rely on control, and manipulation, so they can hide in plain sight and trick you. And then you said the same thing, and I thought you-"

"You thought I _what_?"

"I... I didn't—"

"That's right, you didn't _think_. And I suggest," he paused, leveling the anger in his voice to a dangerously low simmer, "that you go take your cauldron cleaner and scrub whatever you are thinking from your head."

"Y-yes, sir, sorry," he boy nodded like this was a plausible thing he could do as punishment for his question.

"Good." He straightened up, flicking a strand of hair that had fallen over his eyes and turning away. "Now get to class."

Wells didn't move, and his anxious face took on a note of confusion. "But... but, sir, it's morning break."

They both turned to look at the clock. Severus turned back to him with all his sleeplessness he felt accentuating the irritation in his glare and the boy quickly changed his tone.

"Err—sorry, sir," and he scurried from the room.

—

The glowing radiance of the Great Hall in late morning made him squint as he walked through the doors. Not leaving the dungeons until noon had been so less painful as a teenager. Then again, most of the operations of Hogwarts now felt foreign to him from this flipped perspective. His legs still felt odd walking passed the Slytherin table and all the way up to the staff one instead. At the moment though, his current target was leading him on without pause. He saw the woman look up from her plate and wave as he drew nearer, his expression darkening.

"Just what," he said, pulling out the chair to the right of her with a scraping sound to sit, "have you been teaching your students?"

His interrogation was met with innocent bewilderment as Freya stopped just short from taking a bite of the peach she was holding. "What?"

"I said—"

But he didn't continue what he had to say without first casting a furtive glance around the grand room. Morning break didn't attract many students back considering breakfast was so long, but there were still snacks and drinks available to those with a penchant for studying with a cup of tea or otherwise nearby. Being so early in the year though, there was merely a scattering of small social groups, and even less at the staff table. No one around to hear—though a Gryffindor boy was hovering at the end of a table nearby.

As he scanned, their eyes met, and to Severus's great displeasure, the boy seemed to take this as an opening to walk straight up to the staff table. The sigh his arrival was met with was verging on a hiss that did not at all seem to help the student realize he was interrupting.

"Hello Professor Snape," said the boy, who had a Prefect's Badge on his lapel and barely even glanced at the Potion's teacher. The second his eyes slid away, Severus took one look at the gaze he was casting on Freya, rolled his eyes, and began aggressively grabbing food for his plate. He would just have to wait, it seemed.

"Hello, Professor Fawkes," the Prefect said with much more enthusiasm.

She inclined her head in greeting, but didn't seem to reply at first, though Severus couldn't be sure as he was busy stabbing butter onto his muffin.

"It's Adamson, Professor— Adrian Adamson," he prompted. Far from sounding put out that his teacher was unsure of his name, he sounded glad at the chance to help out.

"Oh, yes! Mr. Adamson," Freya replied, nodding now. "What can we do for you?"

"Actually, I just wanted to tell you, Professor," he puffed out his chest just a little, "I've already completed the essay you assigned."

There was a pause where the boy seemed to deflate just a bit.

"The one due today...? Well, I should hope so."

"Err, yes, Professor, that's the one." He shuffled on his feet and adjusted the shoulder strap of his bag, but not to be outdone, he continued on with more energy. "And, I've also passed by your classroom and polished the door handles."

"The door handles?"

"That's right," he nodded with pride. "I noticed when Jordan banged the doors open last class, they were scuffed against the wall, so I took it upon myself. You're welcome."

The boy's eyes finally left his preferred teacher to glance towards the angry stare he was receiving from Severus as he sipped his coffee, but he seemed to be holding out in keen expectation against the silence that had fallen.

"Err... Alright," Freya finally said, clearing her throat and casting a look of confusion at her fellow teacher as if he could explain the situation.

"I believe Mr. Adamson is begging at the table for points." He wasn't interested in playing even the neutral party in this equation, cutting straight to the point.

Freya turned her raised brows back to the Prefect, but he was looking as shocked as she was.

"What? No, I would never, Professor," he refuted with questionable innocence. He seemed to have found a merciful person to lie to, as Freya appraised him with a kind smile.

"What kind of spell did you use to do your cleaning?" It was a simple enough question, but it seemed to stump the boy.

"Err... None?"

"None? You mean you did it by... hand?"

"That's right," he nodded proudly.

"And you want House points... at a school of magic?"

The question seemed to gum-up the gears in Adamson's brain, and he stared down at a basket of scones on the table.

Severus angled the bite he took from his fork just enough that he could get a good look at the sharp smile that flashed on Freya's face at the boy. He recognized that smile by now and he was at least going to enjoy the show. She leaned forward, swiping a cookie from a platter and handing it to him.

"Well, I appreciate your good intentions, anyway."

He looked dejectedly at the cookie, as if reluctant to take this token of his failed efforts. "Err... I—I really didn't mean to beg for anything, Professor."

"Of course not, of course not!" She shook her head then flipped back the sheet of hair that had fallen from behind her shoulder at this motion. "Just take that for now, and please remember: it's the house elves that make the food here and keep the castle in the utmost of cleanliness, I assure you, so there's no need for you to be doing that. Though, it wouldn't hurt to learn some spells for the future. And if you are ever craving a treat, just ask the table. I can't wait to read your essay!"

Severus almost felt bad for the boy as he walked away with his little cookie, unable to argue with the bright smile and 'jarfuls of helpfulness' of Freya Fawkes. It was nice to watch other people be subjected to the insufferable woman. He was surprised, however, to find out that she wasn't as soft as the platter of crumbly cookies, and hadn't lavished a Prefect with praise for doing the bare minimum. Apparently, the boy had been thinking of her along the same lines.

"I swear they think we're running a school for muggle cleaning services," she said suddenly and he looked up from his plate. She rolled her eyes and he assumed this wasn't the first time she had seen this routine this week. His mood turned back to sour instantly. "What were you trying to talk to me about?"

"Forget it. I don't want to bother when we'll just be interrupted by some student wanting to carry your bag to class."

She looked taken aback, but amused. "Sorry?"

"I will talk to you later," he said, though it came off sounding like he was threatening to deal with her after class. His teacherly persona was proving a to be a comfortable rendition of his personality.

Her brow lifted curiously, but she went back to her own plate, accepting the drop in subject. "Rough morning? Again?"

He focused on gulping down his coffee, gaze cast straight ahead. He knew by now, after a week of sitting next to the woman for meals, that she would just keep talking whether he replied or not, seeming to carry the conversation just fine from his muted reactions alone. It was annoying, but at least she had limited ammunition to chatter about. Mostly she was kept busy peeling various fruits, which he found pleasantly comical, as this display of acting out Care of Magical Creatures facts served to remind him that she was just some aberration that he could ignore without wasting too much thought on. Unfortunately, her diet must mean that she needed to eat almost constantly, so she just happened to be in the Great Hall every morning he had trudged in for his late breakfast—at least, that was the interpretation he had chosen to believe, because the other analysis, that she was just using this as an excuse to get in three full rounds of spying on him in close proximity per day, was insufferable to think about in light of his rough week.

"You should get more sleep; you look really tired."

He sighed deeply. "Thank you for that exceedingly enlightening advice. I had not considered _sleeping more_."

"Well, that's not very clever of you," she said with a sunny smile. "You should try it some time, it would do you wonders. Maybe with a more rested appearance, you could get students approaching you at all hours badgering you for House points, too."

"Oh, joy," he said in monotone. "Do you really think so?"

Apparently, she was fond of taking sarcasm literally. She turned in her seat and leaned her elbow on the table to assess him, which he thoroughly tried to ignore by unwrapping a second muffin. Her casual attitude annoyed him the most, and he kept his back purposefully straight.

"Hmm... Maybe with a tie?"

Her golden eyes answered his sharp glare with a harmless blink.

"I do not need help dressing myself," he said, affronted, "thank you very much."

But she had reached towards her pocket, and with a thud of his dropped butter knife, he had grabbed his own in his robes. She affixed him with a devilish grin, both frozen with their hands in their pockets, trying not to look conspicuous as they were at the head of the room.

"What charms do you know that defend against neck-ties?" she asked sweetly.

"I don't need to defend against it if you haven't any hands left to cast the spell," he muttered with venom.

She laughed off his threatening comment with ease, perhaps fully aware of the emptiness of it despite that he still had not revealed that he had already tried this spell on her to no effect. She turned back to sit straight in her seat and he relaxed as well.

"I suppose you'll just have to get proper sleep then," she said.

"Some of us don't need to rely on appearance to get unwanted flattery," he chided. "I am a Head of House; I get all the brown-nosing I can put up with as is."

"Really?"

She seemed keenly interested in this, and he could imagine why. Rather than let the snoop get ahead of him on this matter, however, he fully planned to confront her about it first. Just not in the middle of the Great Hall.

"We can discuss it later," he said with a meaningful glance. He saw the attentiveness in her eyes turn serious behind the benign expression.

"Hmm... I have my first round of essays to grade tonight."

"You're only just now collecting essays? Are you joking?" He had already assigned his upper level classes with homework on the first day, and had spent the previous night getting in his first taste of grading alone in his office, as he hadn't wanted to go near the staff room.

"No, I'm not joking," she said with annoying sincerity. "I was going to go up to the research library tonight for grading. We could meet there and talk?"

He stared at her blankly, taking in the way the sunlight shining from all around lit up her long red hair and pure golden eyes in a way that made her look almost angelic had it not been for the slow diabolical curling at the corners of her lips that seemed to be in reaction to his current confusion.

"The what?"

—

He stormed out of the Great Hall feeling almost more irritated than when he had entered. At least he had a full stomach.

Marching up the marble staircase, he followed the instructions he had just been given, taking sharp turns until he came to a door labeled 'STAFF ONLY' and yanked it open. His head was only ducked in for a split second while he confirmed that it was in fact a library, looking positively splendid and stately, before he threw the door shut and retraced his steps back down to the Entrance Hall in a resentful simmer.

How long had he stood in front of the restricted section with her, jabbering on about nothing, thinking himself high and mighty over all the reading material the school had to offer? And now, as his shoes echoed on the marble staircase, old reading material was jumping to his mind about Hogwarts professors being involved in research even while they were employed as professors. It was more than a prestigious teaching title, this he knew. He had wanted the job in part specifically _because_ of the freedom to continue his studies alongside the work of packaging that research into digestible bits to a younger audience. But as he racked his brain the only thing his imagination had ever pictured was teachers studying in their own respective classrooms and perhaps offices.

"... _a little absurd to say you know everything about them, especially to me_..."

The memory of her voice from nearly a week ago sounded a hundred times more annoying in his mind, and he didn't care if anyone passing him saw the unbridled contempt on his face.

"Everything alright, Severus?"

His expression was startled into a blank canvas, because the voice had not only come from above him as he passed behind the staircase towards the dungeons, but it belonged to Albus Dumbledore. He looked up at the wizard leaning over the railing above him, feeling very short.

"Headmaster? Ah... Everything is—"

"I'm sure it is indeed fine," Dumbledore interrupted, apparently not willing to even listen to his attempts at neutrality. "Could I perhaps borrow you for a moment? Upstairs, please."

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from making a face, not at all liking where this was going. The hall had cleared out and left him no distractions to look towards as he doubled back up the stairs and followed the way he was led, down a hallway to an empty classroom. Not even worthy of the headmaster's office, apparently. Or perhaps the conversation was really that brief.

He closed the door behind him and stepped away from it, coming to stand to the side of a tall window where Dumbledore was gazing out.

"Yes...?" The smile and twinkle were missing from the old wizards' features and he just wanted him to cut to the chase.

Finally, Dumbledore turned to look at him. "How has your first week teaching been, Severus?"

He blinked, restraining his features from giving away any of his discomfort at this question.

A month and one week. No, not even—a month and five days. The man hadn't spoken to him in private in that long. Barring when he had seen him for his trial, enclosed as they had been in a small room with ministry officials on all sides; his authorization letter to his teaching position, signed by both Dumbledore and a ministry official; and the times they had been in the same room together since he arrived at the castle; he hadn't received the slightest bit of interest from the man. And it had not yet been a week of teaching. But it had been five days of teaching since a student had approached him with questions alluding to matters most dark. But there was no possible way Dumbledore could know about that.

"It's been—"

"Fine? I presume?"

He blinked again. "Yes, headmaster."

"Excellent," he nodded his long-bearded chin, as if he absolutely believed the filled in fabricated speech. "But have there been any problems?" In the minuscule pause, he continued, "Anything I should know about?"

_No, nothing you bloody well should be capable of knowing about, but apparently you don't function on the same level as us mere mortals_ , he thought bitterly. "What are you implying? If there have been any complaints in the form of letters-"

"There have not," he said with a raise of his chin, "thankfully. Nor has anyone attempted to storm the gates in person, either." He paused, and Severus imagined that normally the headmaster might have smiled pleasantly or shared a laugh had he been conversing with someone else. "It could certainly be possible that word has not traveled quite as fast as worries can carry the imagination, however. Someday, it could certainly still happen."

"And when it does?" He didn't need to placate himself with possibilities; he was much more certain.

"And when it does, I am sure that there will be a long length of time wherein you have taught at this school without incident, that I can point any concerned citizen towards to ponder for themselves."

Bespectacled eyes bore into his own and he wasn't so sure he was being reassured as much as warned that this reality would be willed into existence or else. For the first time, he didn't dare even consider that Freya had been lying about keeping their incident a secret. It was unlikely Dumbledore would be wasting time chatting with him at all if he actually did know, and he definitely wouldn't have waited until now.

The silent tension in the room finally got to him, and he swallowed before he could stop the annoyingly persistent reflex. If he wasn't so tired and on edge from earlier, he could probably have kept his hands from nervously fidgeting and his heart from so rudely reminding him it was there, but he simply wasn't in the best of conditions, and his guilty conscious got the better of him. And if he wasn't in such a predicament where he needed to believe what he was thinking in order to convey it with conviction, he would admit that it was just Dumbledore in general that triggered in him the feeling of standing before a vast sea of shame.

"One of my students approached me this morning," he confessed, casting his eyes down and justifying this action by concluding that it was a tactical move to say it before he was asked, not that Dumbledore was conducting this whole conversation.

"Oh?"

"He didn't say much before I stopped his line of questioning, but he did seem to have some notion about me."

"And where," Dumbledore kept his tone balanced, but the faintest of inclinations was all it took to make his employee's heart jump, as he slowly spoke, "might he have possibly gotten—"

It was Severus's turn to interrupt, feeling only slightly rude considering he had been so twice now.

"His Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher seems to think it a good idea to fill her students' heads with examinations of those who have ill intent."

For the first time, Dumbledore showed the hint of a smile, and Severus held in his bitter look about the cause.

"Ah," he said sagely, suddenly adopting the look of a wizened mentor fondly remembering his pupil, though it was not being directed anywhere near the man in front of him. "A good defense in current times, I dare say."

"And what good is it," he queried, suppressing the indignation in his voice with effort, "if it turns those questioning minds towards people who will actually listen and provoke those thoughts further?"

Dumbledore turned his eyes back on him, and he thought at first that his words were going to be misinterpreted to their worst meaning, but he only returned to his neutral judging stare.

"Thankfully," he said, "no one like that exists here at Hogwarts. The closest those inquiring minds will get is someone who can steer them in the correct direction." Dumbledore shuffled his folded hands over his robes, looking down to smooth the intricate patterned fabric, and when he raised his eyes again, they captured his in a piercing blue stare. "Right, Severus?"

He cursed himself for swallowing again, wincing as he failed to stop it. "Yes, headmaster."

"Good."

Four years he had spent working under someone who thought of people as less than vermin and killed his own supporters without question for their failures, and now even with him gone, standing before someone who knew all he had turned a blind eye to made him feel just as hollow and pathetic. He felt his head hanging although his spine was perfectly straight, and he could only assume the feeling was because he was sinking into the floor.

"Is there anything else? Anything else that I could do?" He was asking almost out of desperation to find some way to appease the heavy weight of the gaze cast on him like a spell, but he hated that this had slipped from his mouth, because he had said it before in a much more dire need to prove himself. He wanted to, truthfully, painfully. He wanted to prove he could be believed and trusted enough to be given some sort of task in an area he could excel in. Had he not done his best at what little, albeit still very deadly, a task Dumbledore had asked of him before?

Dumbledore let the silence lapse uncomfortably as he appraised him, nodding his head very slowly to look both through his spectacles, and over them in turn.

"No."

He clenched his jaw and nodded once at a desk behind the headmaster, staring at it unseeing.

"Alright."

Graciously, Dumbledore lifted the oppressive air from the room with a steadying breath that cleared the silence, apparently feeling it was no longer necessary.

"Your work is here, Severus, and you will do well. There is no need for you to push your limits elsewhere."

His brow twitched in confusion as this sudden change caught him off guard, but when he peeked back up at the headmaster, he wasn't looking nearly as placating as his words. Instead, a deep crease was lining his brows, and he looked almost annoyed, though the subject of his ire seemed to be in the direction of a far corner of the classroom, not at his employee. He couldn't tell if these words were meant to mollify or tell him his place, but both just made him feel like he was being brushed aside.

"However..."

Severus snapped his head fully up as the pale blue eyes refocused on him, just as sharp and present as the voice of the man they belonged to.

"...If you should ever feel the need to leave, for any reason, I would hope that you would remember what I told you."

The brightly lit wizard before him hazed out of focus and in his mind's eye he was looking at a much more shadowy Dumbledore, in a dark room, with a phoenix softly glowing on a dresser behind him. It made him remember that he truthfully had never really spoken to the man alone before.

Severus gave one mechanical nod of his chin, keeping his eyes cast to the past. His voice seemed to be trapped there as well, coming out at only half his normal volume.

"Don't come back."

Dumbledore nodded once in finality, apparently satisfied to leave the conversation there as he turned to walk slowly towards the door, though he was not followed by a single footstep. He turned to look over his shoulder with one aged hand on the door handle.

"Oh, and Severus? If you happen to see Freya, do say hello from me."

—

The rest of his day passed by in a murky fog, wherein he was both short in temper and feeling a deep yearning for his nice warm bed, with the covers pulled fully over his head and an entire cauldron's worth of Sleeping Draught in him. He skipped lunch entirely, not feeling the slightest bit hungry, and spent all of his free time locked in his office. He was still debating on dinner when, half-way through the hour, he remembered he should eat before taking Sleeping Draught—which he was certainly actually going to do later that night because the potion had been doing wonders to keep his dreams away every night after that first one and he absolutely did not want any after today—and rushed out of his chair to get a few quick bites of something.

He made it all of zero inches out his office door, however, as when he opened it, Nicholas Wells, the sixth-year Slytherin, was standing with his fist half raised, about to knock. The boy looked like he might have tripped the magical barrier of a dark wizard's home and was about to be devoured by a pack of bloodthirsty tigers. Severus let out an extremely long sigh through his nose before turning on his heel, letting the door hang open.

" _In_ ," he snapped, sitting back down in his desk chair and summoning a much less comfortable one for the boy with a flick of his wand.

There was much scuffling of feet as the boy seemed torn between following the command, not remembering how to close a door properly, or perhaps just bolting down the hallway. He finally got his brain working to accomplish the two more sensible tasks, closing the door and taking his seat with his body held rigid in place as he stared across the desk.

As Severus arduously leaned forward and tented his hands, letting out another exasperated sigh, he contemplated why he had not been more fascinated with something like Herbology, or perhaps the field research of this study. Wandering off into the wilderness to document unknown plants, completely alone, was sounding more and more like the smarter career path. Perhaps he could take up the legacy of Kiaran James, minus the getting caught part.

"What," he finally said, not opening his eyes as he massaged the center of his brow, "do you want, Wells?"

"Err... Um..."

He could hear the boy swallowing nervously, and this only served as a reminder of his own earlier conversation. He stopped himself from sighing again, not wanting to completely look like he was having a meltdown in front of a student. Instead, he quietly filled his lungs and willed himself to look up with a steady mostly-calm gaze.

He could tell just from looking at him, that he had a kindred spirit in today's luck. The boy looked just as moody and nerve-wracked as he felt, and he inwardly chided himself for showing even a fraction of the same emotions as a teenager. At least the boy had his age as an excuse for looking so unsure of himself. A part of his gut that wasn't already in knots twinged and he decided to approach this situation with more care the second go around.

"Speak," he commanded, though not unkindly. It was more of a prompt to let the boy know he could, because he currently looked altogether unsure if he should.

It seemed to have the intended effect, and he focused his eyes back on his teacher.

"Sir, I'm... I'm very sorry for what I said earlier," he began. "I didn't mean to... to imply anything."

Severus raised his brows, but his eyes remained unimpressed. He was unwilling to even touch the very idea of implications.

"I... I just," the boy went on, struggling as his prepared script had apparently run out after only one sentence, "I just wanted to speak to you, s-sir. I didn't mean to do anything that would get you in trouble."

To Severus's utmost shock and horror, the boy's voice started to waver, and he immediately wished he had just taken the Sleeping Draught and passed out in his bed without dinner.

"I—That's... quite alright, Mr. Wells," he quickly cut in before whatever the boy was about to say next could be uttered. "There was no trouble caused, so you are free to carry on so long as you do not bring it up again."

"But, sir! Please, you have to listen." The boy suddenly looked up with a wild desperation, his hands gripping the sides of his chair, and Severus felt just as gripped, frozen in place by this bewildering show of emotion, as he listened. "I know you're lying; I just know it. And if you are, then you're really a—a—" he stopped himself from saying it before he could be cut off by the forming reprimand, "I won't say it, but I know you are! And if you are, and you're really that scared of being caught—"

" _Mr. Wells!_ " He slammed both hands down on the desk, pushing himself up to furiously lean over it. " _You will stop at_ -"

"Please!" The boy actually looked like he might cry. "Please, sir, I'm begging you, it's my father!"

The shouted admonishment he had been about to deliver died in his throat, and he paused with his mouth agape at the boy, who jumped at this opportunity to continue.

"He's been missing f-for a month, a-and... and you _know_ why," he looked down, somehow seeming ashamed despite everything. "I just... I thought that maybe you would know something, where he is, but if you won't even talk about it... Is it really that bad? Is he... is he... Is my father in that much danger?"

Severus stared down at his student. He was looking up at him with tears he seemed embarrassed about, hastily swatting them from his eyes even as he attempted to hold his teacher's gaze, pleading for answers. But he could only look on in abject horror, grimacing away from the painfully open display of sensitivity and its horrible source.

He sat back down. And once again tented his fingers on his desk.

Wood grain captivated his eyes as they followed the unsteady lines back and forth, pressing the tips of his fingers to his lips.

The boy waited in silence, though his unsteady breathing could still be heard.

His mind was racing, searching with the same kind of desperation he had just witnessed in the boy's eyes, for something, anything, to say that would plant him squarely on the side of the line where his feet had been ordered to stay, but not leave him feeling even more thoroughly remorseful than he already did.

"I am... sure that your father will be found eventually," he finally said, not looking at the boy, because he knew, even without having to see the blur just outside his line of sight, that this was only a half-way comforting thought. The other half was a viscerally uncomfortable possibility that the sixteen-year-old shouldn't have to hear from a teacher whom he had just met.

The answering silence pressed on, until he felt he couldn't just leave it at that.

"And the rest of your family?" He looked directly at the boy this time, forcing himself to take in the numb shock on his young face.

"I... um, my mother. She's been really worried..."

"Have you an owl?"

He boy looked bewildered, as if owls were a foreign animal he hadn't yet learned. "Err, yes. Yes, sir."

"Write to your mother. I am certain she will want to hear how your first week at school went. That's an order."

The boy stared at him until his eyes overflowed again, and Severus looked away to give him privacy while he recovered himself.

"I-I will. I'll go and do that, sir," he said, getting shakily to his feet.

"Don't forget to head up to dinner, too, Mr. Wells," he said, letting his voice slip back into its firmer tone as his student made for the door.

"I won't. Err, thank you, Professor."

He looked uncertainly at the boy, half-turned as he was to look over his shoulder with sincerity and confusion of his own, and nodded once. And then he had ducked out, shutting the office door behind him.

Although the clock on his desk assured him that only fifteen minutes passed after that, he sat for what felt like hours, staring at the empty chair before him, unable to take his wand out to vanish it. When he finally got up to leave, he felt insanely like he was running away from it, not wanting to be in the same room as the unyielding wooden chair, but not able to get rid of it. It was a testament to how much the whole day had left him feeling utterly drained, as he dragged his feet up the marble staircase, taking sharp turns, that he would rather subject himself to doing literally anything else but be forced to sit in solitude and think about everything that had happened for a moment longer.

Standing out in stark contrast to his darker emotions, he was vividly thankful for whatever infinite wisdom had possessed Dumbledore to keep him on only as a teacher and not ask him to help round up the fathers and mothers of his own students while they sat unknowingly before him every day. He could stomach being a traitor in only so many eyes.

—

As he took a steadying breath, hand on the wooden door just above the polished brass 'STAFF ONLY' sign, he wondered if his lungs would eventually forget how to function without him purposefully inflating them and forcing out sighs every five minutes. Supposing he was about to test the limits of how much they could handle, he reminded himself that he had the ingredients for Sleeping Draught already waiting in his office if he decided to just turn around and leave. Hopefully not many teachers spent their time here, having a whole staff room, offices, and other varied little nooks to hole up in throughout the school. If he suddenly needed to leave, and if there was only one particular witness to his heel-turn, it would be fine, as he didn't give a single thought about offending her at least. He heard footsteps coming down the hall to his right and finally pulled the door open, spurred on to not look like a creep standing stock still outside.

Just as had earlier been described to him, the sequestered section of library was situated above the staff room, but on a higher floor, and as he passed through the enclosed entranceway, the room opened up enough that he could see its magnificent centerpiece: a wide double helical staircase, hollowing out the middle of this little section of castle, so that he could look down into multiple levels of floors lined with bookshelves. He had been wondering how this small space could hold enough room for what he imagined would be a plethora of archives, but now it made sense. Each floor was smaller than the large wings of the main library, but looking over the polished wood railing, he could see the whole room was stacked like a layered cake, more vertical than horizontal. He didn't have long to look though, as he was suddenly beckoned from behind in a muted call.

"Severus! Over here."

He turned away from the brightly lit stairway with its echoing steep drop, towards the more dimly lit shelves placed in a circular maze around this top level of the room. There was a cozy fire against one wall, situated in a wide clearing with two large round group work tables, each designed to be half booth and half regular seating, with the tall backs of the booth sides creating a decorative wooden semi-circle barrier between the study area and the shelves. It was at the leftmost table that he was being summoned with a wave. He forced himself not to sigh or roll his eyes, more for his own integrity than anything, feeling like he was trying to quit a bad habit.

The battered leather satchel he used to cart his papers and things around took another beating as he plopped it roughly on the table, taking a chair one empty neighbor down from the only other occupant of the table. He would have much preferred to be completely opposite her, but he was trying for privacy, and he didn't much like the idea of his voice carrying across the room and down to the lower levels, which he couldn't be sure were unoccupied. The high backs of the luxuriantly comfortable chairs combined with the semi-circle of booth seating and the tucked away low ceiling gave the whole little area a plush quieted air in contrast to the open silo center of the library.

"So glad you could make it," Freya said, smiling with her hands folded over her little black leather teacher's planner. She stowed it away in her bag, placed next to her in the empty space of the curved booth on which she sat.

"I very nearly didn't," he said with barbed truthfulness.

"Then I would have just had to pester you all through morning break tomorrow what it was you wanted to talk about – that would have been awful," she tilted her head mockingly, but he wasn't in the mood.

"Actually, I don't want to talk about it."

"You're joking," she said, dumbfounded.

He busied himself with pulling out his pile of essay scrolls, now realizing he was unsure which ones were graded and which weren't. Apparently, obtaining his teaching license hadn't magically overridden his teenaged habits of disorganization with his bags.

"No, I am most certainly not joking. And," he yanked the top off his inkwell, not even looking up as he immediately set in to business, "I do not wish to joke, I do not wish to talk—I just want to get this done and go to bed. So, if you would, please, for once, be quiet."

If she had anything to say rattling around in that airhead of hers, she kept it to herself. He could just make out her surprised expression, eyebrows all the way up, and caught the movement of her head as she looked down at her own flattened out pile of essays that she must have prepared before he got there, but she said nothing. Eventually, he heard her rummage around in her own bag for her ink and quill, and the only sounds that could be heard in the room were the crackle of fire and the shuffling of parchment over the smooth wooden surface. He relaxed and focused in on his work.

There had been no time to prepare what to say if she had asked, and he honestly didn't know how he would have explained away his behavior – without telling the truth of course. The truth was that he currently had no desire whatsoever to bring up what his student had said to him today, and that he had only shown up to this meeting despite this new resolve so that he could have a kind of... buffer. If he was remembering right from his childhood, the muggle warning printed in big red letters usually read, ' _in case of fire, break glass._ ' In his switched around rendition: in case the feeling that his insides were comprised of slowly shattering glass and he might crack up at any moment, he could just turn to his left and get into a very mentally consuming argument with a fiery bird. It was near enough the same concept. It relied on the condition that she would listen to him when he asked for peace though, unless he wanted to turn the ending into ' _start a fire_ ', which wouldn't be that bad of an outcome so long as he didn't perform any dark magic. If she really had not told Dumbledore about him attacking her, he supposed he could get away with at least a harmless back and forth, considering she had been practically baiting him into it all week. These two modes, total silence or aggravated magical spat, were all he had the capacity for at the moment, though he was greatly favoring the silence and hoped it could last.

He peered at the top left corner of the parchment he was grading though nothing was written there and checked without directly looking that his table-mate was indeed simply quietly doing her work. He allowed himself one minuscule sigh, only because it was of relief for once.

As the time passed on in blissful silence, he managed to finish what papers were left to mark of the sixth-year's assignment and fully complete the fifth-year's. In hind sight, he probably should have been more tactical on which days he planned to give and collect essays, leaving room for adjustments when he was overcome with unforeseen bouts of bad luck that left him unwilling to get through a whole grading in one night.

When he looked around for a clock—finding that it was what he had earlier mistaken for a decorative brass dangle underneath the chandelier above the staircase but what he now interpreted to be four clocks melded together and slowly rotating around to show the whole room the time all at once—he was surprised to hear the first sound that there was other life in the otherwise silent room. Soft footfalls could be heard making their way up the stairs on carpeted steps, and he kept his head turned towards the sound, watching the clock rotate until whoever it was would make their appearance on this floor.

"Oh! My word, you startled me—Oh, look at this!"

The squeaky voice of Professor Flitwick had startled him as well, and Severus found himself looking around at his own work table wondering what was so interesting. Freya was looking up in much the same confusion, looking like she had just been awoken from a trance, quill still in hand.

"The pair of you could be students, studying together like this—if not that this place is strictly kept staff only," the Charms teacher went on.

He cast Freya a look of disdain out of the corner of his eye, as if blaming this association with youth on her, but she was mirroring his irritation, albeit more concealed behind a smile.

"It's alright to use this room for grading as well, right?" She asked.

"My, of course! And what better than to have the newest professors helping each other out like this; good to see."

Severus was so shocked at being spoken to by a fellow teacher, one so normal as to not even mention astrology or fruit or fashion, after a week of nothing but curt nods and murmurs from the others, that he couldn't even begin to respond. Thankfully the other two seemed more than capable of conversing right around him.

"Yes," Freya agreed brightly, "it's good to have Severus here to keep me focused. I would be chatting up the potted plants in my office, unable to get anything done if not for him." If this was meant to be a slight dig at him for ordering her to be quiet, he was not ruffled, as he fully expected she was the type to get carried away in conversation with inanimate objects.

Flitwick chuckled in his high voice, nodding as if he understood and looking between the two of them as if they were undoubtedly perfectly matched work partners.

"Well, that's wonderful to hear! Perhaps I could lend my own advice, as one more experienced in the profession?" He took out his wand and raised it as he had many times at the front of his classroom, ready to instruct. "You will want to start good work habits early before you get overwhelmed. Using a few quick charms to highlight and find sources will cut your time spent reading essays right in half! Trust me, you will want that time back for your own social lives come the end of the year—Oh, I don't mean just Hogsmeade visits, but time to read, visit with family, and research right in here as well! You'd do well to start properly pacing your process now, at the beginning of the year."

"Oh... Thank you, Professor Flitwick, we appreciate it." Her less than enlightened reply to this advice wasn't much better than his own mute one, but he was still distantly annoyed at being spoken for in this small way.

"Of course, of course! Now, get those scrolls graded pop-quick and head off to bed nice and early!"

They both nodded and watched the professor make his exit. Severus stared after him, feeling genuinely touched at this unprecedented friendliness, having been shown no reason to doubt that Flitwick thought of him any less than a regular teacher at Hogwarts. He felt like he was all of eleven years old again, getting handed back his own first essay in Charms, receiving high praise from the man and beaming with his whole squishy youthful face, feeling nothing but simple childish pride in his work.

He turned back to look at the essays laid out before him, but the sight of his fellow new teacher caught his eye instead. She was leaning with both elbows on the table, chin rested on netted fingers, grinning from ear to ear meaningfully at him, as if peering into his fond memories. His mood was instantly ruined, and he shot her smile down to an apologetic purse of her lips with his glare.

"Well, that was lovely," she stated, leaning back in her seat to stretch. "What were the spells he was talking about, though?"

He frowned down at the papers in front of him, still in the back of his mind trying to figure out how much that interaction had depended on her having been there to elicit such a positive response.

"Probably just the standard charms we learned to study with," he muttered, taking out his wand and making a small sharp line in the air over the paper. He said the spell aloud for demonstration, " _Quaere: Lavender._ "

Freya leaned forward to see what he had already graded the student on; a small glowing yellow light appeared over all the mentions of lavender on the page.

"Ohh. Alright, let me try," she said, whipping her wand out over her own student's paper.

He had a split second to take in this image before his body caught up to his brain and he slapped down a hand over his own papers defensively with a sharp, " _Stop_."

She stopped, wand held out and mouth open to say the spell.

He shook his head in warning.

Her eyes took in his protective stance over the very flammable scrolls scattered around him, back down to her own, and then she lowered her wand with a sigh.

"Oh, alright then, I guess I'll be testing it out on a stone tablet first."

He relaxed his posture and straightened out the papers he had jostled as if they were his own essays—actually, he hadn't treated his own works with such care now that he thought about it. They were either shoved in a closet somewhere or gone for good. Even though he had spent countless hours, days, and sometimes weeks at a time on single projects, trying to get everything he possibly could drained from his mind into ink on a page.

"You know, I don't think I really want to use those methods, anyway."

His head came up in surprise, already assuming he would find Freya saying this with some aggravating knowing smile on her face, but she was staring much as he had been down at her own students' scrolls with thoughtfulness. He scrutinized the woman until she looked up.

"What? I kind of want to enjoy my first year, you know? Read every word," she shrugged, "until I inevitably get swamped half-way through the year with overdue work, fully regret it, and end up drowning my mistakes in a pint with Flitwick at the Three Broomsticks. That sounds like good memories to me, though."

Completely ignoring the latter half of what she had said, he slowly nodded down at the parchment in front of him. "I... agree. I think I would rather not be lazy and read it all."

"Come again?"

"I said, I—" he looked up again, and this time she was smiling at him in that ever-annoying way, undoubtedly because he had made the mistake of agreeing with her out loud. "I said you're an idiot and I cannot wait for you to get fired for your negligence."

She broadened her grin at him in one last taunt, but looked to be resuming her grading—the slow-paced way. He, on the other hand, began packing up his now half-finished work, piling the scrolls with care on top of the rest that he would have to do tomorrow. She dropped her quill back down instantly as he stood up.

"You're leaving?" She watched in dismay as he was already slinging his bag over his shoulder.

"You heard Flitwick," he said casually, hoping she wasn't about to put up a fuss. "We should pace ourselves. I have other work to do besides grading essays."

"Like what?"

He cast a withering look down at her. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe you could figure out what a Potion's Master would have to do besides written assignments."

She glared up at him but quickly recovered. "Did you hear the rest of what he said? About making time for social lives?"

"No."

He just caught the look of incredulousness on her face as he turned away, smirking to himself. However, he didn't make it far towards the entryway before he heard the shuffle and rushed footsteps that he had been dreading. She had done so well at being quiet for a solid hour, he had almost had hope that things would go perfectly his way. He turned to look behind him, taking in the woman standing there expectantly with her already packed satchel.

"Need any h—"

" _No_ ," he said again, more forcefully this time, as he turned back to keep walking, now with a tag-along at his side.

"Oh, come on. Didn't you have fun sitting in total silence?"

"I did," he agreed pointedly, "and that was plenty of socializing for me, thanks."

"But surely it would be just as fun to sit in total silence making potions as well?"

"Quite right, it would be. Alone. Without any annoying flammable creatures around."

They arrived at the door, but he stopped their progress without pushing it open. Now was his chance to shake her off before she followed him all the way down to the dungeons. He took in her completely unperturbed smile, looking like she could take an insult per every stair with ease and would not budge from his side. He tried a different approach.

"The work is cutting up flobberworms," he said with a cool grin.

She narrowed her eyes. "Fine by me."

"Fifty of them."

She shrugged.

"They aren't for eating, in case that wasn't clear to you," he said in exasperation, falling back on insults as his plan fell through. Perhaps it was his mistake for thinking she had the same lack of fortitude as his first-year students.

"Eat them...? Oh," she rolled her eyes, "another bird joke. You know, those would perhaps land better if you kept your references to the correct classification of birds."

"Sorry, I teach Potions, not Care of Magical Creatures."

"And I teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. And you had something you wanted to speak with me about regarding my teaching of it, before you so charmingly changed your mind and told me to shut up. And you still showed up here." She crossed her arms, stubbornly looking up at him.

So, she had sorted all that out then. Apparently giving her ample quiet time to think through his actions had not been the smartest move. His mouth twisted as he considered any possible way out of this.

Truthfully, there was no real risk in talking to her about his initial qualm. Dumbledore already knew about it, this was no secret, so there was nothing for her to report back to him. So long as he didn't reveal any new information, he could at the very least have his originally planned conversation with her about being too on the nose at detailing followers of the Dark Arts.

He just simply did not want to, for that meant having to have a conversation with her.

"Do I talk too much? Is that it?"

This question made his eyes refocus on her as if she had just got down on one knee to perform a long-awaited proposal. " _That_ ," he said emphatically, "is _precisely_ the problem, yes. So very glad you have decided to become self-aware. The first step is owning up to one's problem, after all."

Though he was thoroughly enjoying his mockery, she seemed to have run out of humor, delivering a most unamused expression at him. "Are you done?"

In a show of truce, he kept his own mouth shut, merely flashing a self-satisfied smile back.

"Fantastic," she said with sarcastic relief. "So, if I agree to be quiet, may I please come down and be lectured on my teaching methods by your arrogant arse?"

He paused in consideration for one last moment before deciding. "You may."

—

"Fifty flobberworms, eh?"

Not looking up from his cauldron, he tipped the already prepared and bottled flobberworm ingredients in with the rest. "Oops. I lied."

In the confined space of his office, Freya's pantomimed shock sounded especially comical. Behind him he heard the thud of her hand hitting her chest and her shocked gasp before she had even spoken.

" _Severus! You?_ You _lied?_ "

"Please try not to faint, I won't be available to cart you up to the hospital wing until after I'm finished with this." He finally looked up from his task, glancing over his shoulder with a cold look. "Also, you're breaking our agreement."

With that, she mimed buttoning up her lips and idly spun on her heel to continue meandering about his office.

He turned back to the high counter at which he stood working, positioned along the wall opposite the fireplace and in between two shelves. There were plenty besides these to look at, filled with potions and jars of every sort, and he found it just the smallest bit annoying that he could hear her shoes tapping along the stone floor as she made a circle around the room, inspecting everything. At least it was quieter than her first reaction to the recently remodeled room. Apparently, she had known Slughorn (" _He was such a nice man! And his office was so cozy_ — _what did you do to it!_ ") at some point during his tenure, and Severus could just imagine how pretentious he would have been to know such an illustriously enigmatic creature.

As he added the next ingredient and began counting down while he stirred, he heard the familiar creak of a hinge in a corner behind him and promptly lost his place. "Would you mind not rummaging through other people's cupboards?"

"Oh, are they other people's? You won't tell them, will you?"

"Hilarious," he drawled. "If you've stolen anything-"

"Severus, I'm going to need you to abide by the 'no talking' rule, too, if you want it to be upheld so badly."

Too irked to keep talking, he inadvertently complied, stirring a bit faster than was recommended per the instructions.

When finished, he spun around on his heel. She was standing in front of the cupboard—the previously _locked_ cupboard, unless he was entirely mistaken—with her hands behind her back and grinning broadly.

" _Lovely_ organization," she praised, tipping forwards and back on her heels. "Very _interesting_ stuff."

He said nothing, only glared with extreme skepticism as he considered whether casting a spell that scalded a thief's hands if they had recently stolen anything would count as attacking her. He must have moved his wand absently, because she suddenly raised her hands in defense.

"I haven't stolen anything from you, calm down. I was just having a peek."

It was very hard to believe someone that was smiling like they had just won a prize at the fair and stolen two more from round the back, but his ire was momentarily distracted as she made her way to finally sit down peaceably.

"Not there," he snapped, squinting at the uncomfortable wooden chair she had been looking to occupy. She blinked, freezing mid step.

"Oh? Would you rather I...?" She eyed his desk chair with surprise.

" _No,_ absolutely not. Actually..." An idea came to him and he raised his wand to the student's chair, feeling a small pang that its fate was coming to an end, but glad to have an excuse to get rid of it. He flicked his wand and transformed it into a very shoddy looking bird perch, turning back to her with a snide smile of his own. "There, something more your style."

She looked from him to the perch and back. With one prod from her finger, the whole thing teetered dangerously on delicate uneven little legs.

"Couldn't have even made it pretty, could you?"

"Sorry," he said, turning back to his potion for the final steps, "bit busy."

The now familiar sound of creaking wooden legs from a different seat made him look back over his shoulder, but she was not, in fact, smugly sitting in his desk chair with her feet up like he had been picturing for a split second. She looked more uncomfortable than if he had ordered her to sit there to stop bothering him while he worked, peering back at him with her chin down like she was afraid he would tell her to move. When his only reply was to roll his eyes, she perked up and leaned forward to clasp her hands over the desk, sitting at attention. So long as he didn't hear the sounds of her pilfering things from the drawers, he didn't really care. He was about to finish up and force her to have to hand the throne back to its rightful owner anyway.

"Three, two, one," he waved his wand over the cauldron, "there. Time's up. Now then, I believe you are in my-" But when he turned back, a very different seat was capturing his full disgusted attention. " _What_... is that?"

Freya, now sitting up straight with the air of someone in their own office, invited him with one grandiosely waved hand to take a seat in the newly conjured chair in front of the desk where the bird perch had been. Only, he wasn't sure that it could be called a chair, looking more like someone had poorly crossed a covered bassinet with an antique throne.

"Your seat," she said in a prim voice, "your highness."

He jabbed his wand and transfigured the hideous thing into a carbon copy of the one she was sitting in, sitting down without a word. He wasn't at all in the mood to further instigate by trying to reclaim his actual chair.

"Aw, come on! You didn't even let me get the full effect with you in it."

"And what effect," he slowly steepled his hands, resting his chin on the point and his elbows on the arms of the chair, "would that have been?"

From the desk– his desk, or it had belonged to him up until five minutes ago- Freya seemed to have been only putting on a show of poise, as she now diminished to a casual backwards slouch. She studied him with a sulky look on her face, like she had really expected him to sit in that thing.

"The effect of a stuffy potion's professor with no taste for interior decorating," she quipped.

"I dread to think what _your_ office looks like."

"What do you mean?" She spread her hands wide over the desk before her. "This is my office now! No, alright, okay," she hastily moved on as he was already looking irritated again, operating on so little sleep after a long day. "So, you finished your potion?"

"It has to steep."

"Oh? What is it, anyway?"

She turned to stare at the cauldron, and he watched her hair fall over her shoulder in a continuous liquid motion, catching the light of the fire. He was definitely starting to get tired if shiny lights were attracting his attention, though he knew without the magical aid he would just wind up wide awake again in the middle of the night.

"Sleeping Draught," he said, rubbing his temple as if just the name itself was inducing drowsiness.

Her head snapped back to him. "Sleeping Draught? You aren't drinking it yourself, are you?"

"It's for a class. Just a demonstration," he lied, suddenly finding himself defensive of his actions. "And so what if I am? It's not harmful."

"I..." She paused, seeming to search his face for something, but he only offered a calm questioning raise of his brow. "I would just be surprised if you were, considering it doesn't seem to be helping much," she said with indifference.

That was true enough. But he wasn't about to confide his sleeping troubles to her, especially given a small part of what he was accomplishing with his imbibed dreamless sleep was avoiding the memory of her own song.

"Have you ever tried minding your own business? In particular butting out of the business of other people's minds?"

"No," she said curtly in what seemed a very familiar way, and he imagined this was her impression of his earlier response to her. "Consider me a concerned colleague, but I do think your body would function a bit better for teaching if you got some proper rest."

He shifted a little in his seat, as if this notion triggered his brain to perform a diagnostic on the current functioning of his physical state. Apart from feeling tired, he mostly he just felt annoyed.

"I don't need to be physically rested just to recite novice level potion's instructions," he said dismissively. "I can just sit down." Which he had been doing a lot of for his later classes of the day.

Her eyes squinted down at the desk, appearing to try to piece something together. "What? Why would sitting down do anything?"

"My mind," he enunciated as if explaining to a particularly thick first-year, "is working perfectly fine despite whatever I feel physically, which is none of your business either way, thank you very much."

She looked more confused than before, staring at him for a long beat. "This is some weird wizard thing, isn't it? Where do you think your mind is at if not in your body? You're not a ghost."

Now he was confused. At the moment, though, his mental capacity to figure out her meaning was being impaired by his weariness from the day. But, on that train of thought, was his mental capacity contained within his physical one? Were they even talking about the same thing?

"I... am too tired for this," he declared, being entirely honest for once.

She smirked. "Tired in your floating detached _mind_?"

Not to allow her the upper hand so easily, he shoved the more confusing bits of what she had said aside, refortifying his poise. "Interesting take, coming from a creature that can switch between two physical forms—and supposedly keep her mind intact, though I can't quite tell from which form your brain size is determined."

She returned his sneer with a mock smile of her own. It didn't linger on her face, however, turning into a thoughtful glance as her composure changed suddenly and she sat up straight with a purposefully haughty shake of her head. "I'm bound by the same laws of transformative magic as anything is," she explained.

He squinted curiously as she turned her head and slowly brushed her hair through her fingers out to one side so that it spread in a wide angle. He leaned forward as he watched, his interest captured not by the mere extravagant display of hair, but by the fact that if he looked closely, the strands that fell back into place against her shoulder appeared as gorgeous long golden feathers, their form shimmering for a split second in the air before dematerializing back into silky locks. It was the closest she had come to exemplifying her other form's beauty, and he didn't feel it the least bit necessary to hide his stare as she finished with a final sweep of her hair and looked back at him. He supposed she very well knew what she looked like, and he was fine to consider her more of a strange rare creature in that moment rather than someone he shouldn't be so openly gazing at.

"So," she said simply, "as you can see."

"I'm not really sure if that explained things... However, I can see now why your hair glows." Leaning back, he thought of the unnatural shine that he had convinced himself was just the firelight the previous times he had noticed it. "' _Scarlet feathers that glow in darkness, hot to the touch_ '," he quoted, "correct?"

" _Ugh_." The effect of her beautiful display was ruined by her suddenly most inelegant expression. Of all the faces he had seen her make, and all the times he had seen her hide her true emotions behind a plastered-on smile, he was quite surprised to now see her show open disgust. "Please don't quote that ridiculous book at me, I cannot stand how wizards write about phoenixes. And my hair does not _glow_. And _stop_ whatever it is you're thinking right now, I swear—"

But the warning point of her finger only made his brows raise higher and he softly scoffed in amusement. "What's this? Is the fabled bird of all that is light and shining among the darkness of the world—"

" _Stop!_ I'm serious, it's disgusting!"

"— _shy?_ "

She had apparently run out of smiles to throw back at him, but he was thoroughly enjoying being the one to gloat this time, staring back at her pout like a cat that had found a new toy. He had plenty of quotes about phoenixes from his previous year's research sitting useless in his head, and he was now making note of a few more things that had not been listed; such as that it would appear as if her cheeks could glow as well, though this might just be a more human characteristic.

"I... just don't like when people wax poetic about creeds they know nothing about," she said, neatly smoothing a finger over her brow, though it looked more like she was half hiding her face. "We're secretive for a reason, and that's not license to start making stuff up from your own addle-brained wizarding imaginations."

"You're the mascot of a secret society made to fight against dark forces," he reminded her helpfully, as if she may have forgotten.

She sniffed with terse indifference. "Yes, well, Albus is fond of fire magic and he's got a soft heart for symbolism. So what?"

"You saved my life." Normally he wouldn't address this troublesome reality, but right now it seemed more uncomfortable for her to be acknowledged in this way.

"Accident," she mumbled. "My hand slipped."

"My, so modest," he said silkily. "Is sitting atop the throne of the noble hero really so uncomfortable?" She looked down uneasily at her stolen seat, but he didn't need to be sitting at his desk to have the authority in the room. "Perhaps you would rather be... atop a mountain?"

She rolled her eyes so hard her head tilted backward for a second. " _Not_ the mountain myth, please, you're killing me."

He might actually be doing just that, as she was slumping so far down in the chair he might soon lose sight of her over the desk. He smiled coolly, seizing the opportunity he had been waiting for as she folded her arms tightly across her chest, hands pinned at her sides.

"Do you know what isn't a myth?" Before she could even reply to his question, or realize he was reaching for his wand, he had already aimed it at the fire, putting it out and dousing the room in darkness.

It lit again at once, with a brighter flame than before, and the form of Freya leaning across the left side of his desk with her finger outstretched towards it came into view. "What's that? The myth that you're clever if you think you can put out a fire around a phoenix?"

A jet of water gracefully arced from his wand across the room, splashing into the fireplace.

Her voice came through the returning darkness, sounding similarly put out. "Well... Shit."

His smirk was only for himself, as the little room was pitch black, letting in not even the light from the hallway under the crack of the door. The short back and forth from light to dark had messed with his eyes, and even squinting, he realized it might take a minute for his vision to adjust enough to affirm his suspicions. On the other hand, his test subject seemed to not want to comply.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he put a hand up against the abrupt burst of light that burst forth from where he had been staring directly into the darkness. "Do you mind? I'm trying to see something, and I can't do that if my eyeballs are incinerated."

"Guess you'll never know then," she said in a low voice. Blinking, he peeked through his fingers at the image before him.

If he had not been a wizard and grown up around plenty of magical fire, even coming into close contact with it thanks to the Floo Network and such, he might have been shocked to see someone who appeared human holding a handful of fire close enough to their face to singe their eyebrows. As it so happened, he was merely wondering if it was as ticklish and stifling as stepping through a fireplace.

Freya's glare looked especially menacing accompanied by her element, but even in harsh contrasting shadows, he could see she was going along with his mischievous inquisition. She eyed the fire in her hand and stuck it out as far away from herself as her arm would reach, inspecting her hair on her opposite shadowy shoulder.

He grinned in triumph. "It _does_ glow."

"I don't—" She held up a thick lock, peering close and then moving it away. "Can't be. Are you sure? I can hardly tell."

"I can see it from here. Have you really never looked at yourself in the dark before?"

"Well, I don't make a habit of hanging about in dark places," she snapped, and then literally snapped, sending the small flame from her fingers over to the fireplace to try and re-ignite it. It died as it collided with the damp logs, and the room was in darkness for a few more seconds before he flicked his wand—feeling mostly confident he had his aim right—with a spell for more water-resistant fire, disparaging that hers was so useless.

"Spoken like a true warrior of light," he chided.

"Oh, shut up. How many phoenixes do you see actually fighting?"

"Just the one," he admitted. "You yourself could still be the... _chosen one_ , however." He took advantage of the returned light in the room to cast her a snarky grin.

"Yeah, right, whatever," she mumbled, and then seemed to catch herself, straightening up. Clearing her throat, she carefully enunciated her next words. "I mean—Yes, well, I am only here for Albus, so..."

"Why do you do that? Are you covering up an accent?" He had witnessed this before in the Great Hall and found it just as irksome, but he had never been in the mood to initiate conversation with her while he was trying to enjoy his meals. Her surprised reaction looked like she had taken his lack of comment the previous times for granted.

"I—err..."

"Raised on a farm, is that it?"

She pondered this. "Well... not exactly, though, I suppose you could say..."

"You're joking," he said in monotone. "Surely you cannot expect me to believe you would open yourself up to such ridicule by revealing this."

By the careless shrug of her shoulders, she hadn't a care for his future jabs. "So what? It's not what you're picturing, anyway. No, it's more, err..." She locked her fingers together over her mouth, eyebrows knit as she seemed to be trying to decide how much to say. "I... Actually, you know what? It's nothing. What was that thing about you hating my teaching methods, again?"

His eyes surveyed what he could see of her over the desk, but ultimately his question had been much less meaningful than the one she countered with. For a moment he had been caught up in the conversation, simply curious about something to do with Freya, the person, not the phoenix. The phoenix was much more interesting, anyhow, as were his own concerns.

"Right," he said, straightening up and pulling at the cuffs of his sleeves. He couldn't put his finger on why exactly he was so avoidant towards this conversation, but he had stalled long enough. As he opened his mouth to speak, however, he found that nothing would come out. The beginning of the day felt like so long ago now, and he couldn't muster up the same feeling from before after all his subsequent meetings, especially the second one with Wells. He was still feeling prominently protective of anything he might slip about the boy, and there were a few things he wanted to clear up before discussing anything with her.

"You say that you're not some being of justice and purity for all that is sacred in this-"

"Severus, I swear—unless you are going to write a phoenix poetry book and split the profits with me, do shut up."

The corners of his mouth twitched, but he cleared his throat and continued more seriously. "Your loyalty lies with Dumbledore exclusively, correct?"

She nodded uncertainly, as if not following how this was related to her teaching methods.

"Hm..." It was a perhaps insignificant distinction, but nonetheless, it gave him pause. He lapsed into thought, propped up on his elbow, tracing a finger over his lips as he stared blindly at the floor.

The problem wasn't so much what she was teaching. He actually found, in his less high-strung state, that he looked at it much as Dumbledore had, with admiration. One could not rely solely on magic to suss out dangers, and magical objects of detection were limiting. Understanding your opponent on the mental level was vital to survival. He knew this perhaps better than most. Still, he had very deep-seated misgivings about blanket judgments of people willing to mentally explore beyond the pale. He realized he was anxious because he was picturing her response to be in the way others of her order had always looked at him, disapproving and mistrustful, and he found that he supremely did not want to position himself for another taxing conversation where he played the object of abhorrence. He loathed to admit it, even to himself, but this had been the lightest conversation he had had all day, and he was simply stubbornly unwilling to steer it directly into the ground. But she had drawn that distinction, separating herself from the category of heroism, to perhaps closer towards that of a loyal companion. If the person she was loyal to was Albus Dumbledore, the claim could be made that it was not in fact much different given his personal goals and beliefs, but he still found it rather distinctive. Loyalty to a cause versus loyalty to a person was something uniquely fascinating to him, after all.

"Ah... One of my students," he began, slowly, not raising his eyes from the front panel of the desk, "approached me this morning with some... choice quotes, claiming they were from your class."

Freya leaned forward on the desk, and from the serious look on her face he had the distinct feeling that this was in fact her own scholarly office, and he was the student she had called in. "What did he say?"

He shrugged nonchalantly, glad to have such a good excuse to lie here. "He seemed rather atrocious at remembering your exact words. You might want to make sure he is taking notes from now on."

She waved this away, no longer playing games as she set her chin atop her netted fingers. "Even if it was just childish nonsense, I would still like to know what I said that got into his mind."

His eyes met her gaze finally, and he studied her expression. It could be that she was vying for information, but if he looked harder, she seemed like a teacher who understood her role in this complex situation and wanted to know for her own sake of playing her part correctly. His original intent to bring it up to her in the first place had obviously been to make his own life easier, and thus the lives of his students if he could get a better grip on how to handle them. This task would be less painful if he didn't have to shout down the teacher implanting lessons about the Dark Arts, and could just simply see eye to eye with her. Currently, her eyes were staring into his with such a focused intensity that he could see the flickering reflection of the fire turn them to liquid gold.

"It would seem," he started again, carefully picking back up the thread of his words, "that he was curious where he might be able to learn tactics of concealment."

A small crease formed between her brows. "And he came to you about this?"

"Something I said about a potion during class stirred his wild imagination."

"I see," she said, and now it was her turn to stare down at the desk, looking thoughtful. "Concealment... I'm not sure how he managed to get on that track from the classes I've given him."

"Yes, it was—" He blinked, feeling his heart miss a beat. "Are you... How do you know what student I'm referring to?"

Pulled out of her thoughts, she looked up with mild surprise which quickly melted into a wide-eyed apology. "Err... Sorry."

He gaped at her. "You already knew all this?"

"Well, no, of course not. You didn't tell Albus what exactly Mr. Wells had said."

_And for good reason I didn't tell you the whole truth either_ , he thought, suddenly furious.

"Severus," she said in dismay at his expression, "I'm sorry, alright? You didn't show up to lunch, so I was going to come down and make sure you weren't starving, when I ran into Albus and he told me what had happened. And I knew you wouldn't tell me yourself unless I—"

"Unless you lied and weaseled it out of me?" he offered with malice.

"I—I didn't lie, so much as withhold the truth for a little bit longer... And speaking of withholding the truth—fifty flobberworms, by the way!" she added defensively.

" _That_ is not the same _at all_."

She had the good sense to at least look sheepish, fidgeting her hands openly on the desk. "Well... true. I didn't mean to pry, though, honest. I just wanted to hear it from you in your own words. Anyway, it's not like the incident caused any trouble or anything."

He stared at her incredulously. Apparently, Dumbledore and herself had enjoyed a lovely meal together, chatting in friendly tones about how he had just casually bumped into the potion's teacher and was informed about a student approaching him with accusations that he was a Death Eater that could perhaps politely introduce him the secrets of the Dark Arts. He wondered if in the version Dumbledore had told, he had clapped his employee on the back and awarded him a medal for his restraint and a job well done. No mention of his chilly hostility whatsoever.

Finally having to tear his eyes away from her imploring face so that he wouldn't be tempted to hex her out of his office, he stared into the fire, cursing himself for being so foolish as to think for one second that he might have someone on his side. This was no neutral party; she was and always would be Dumbledore's pet. Even if it was such a small thing to lie about, it was exactly what he feared from her the most, that was merely a deceitful warden to him, and it picked at that sore spot in a way he couldn't let go.

"Are you finished?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the fireplace.

"What?"

"If you have all the information you need," he said in a low voice, turning to level his glare on her as he stood from his chair, "I would like to be taking my Sleeping Draught and turning in for the night."

Her mouth popped open indignantly. "Severus! Speaking of _liars_!"

"Oops," he said as venomously as he could. "Now, I believe you're in my chair."

She stood up from it, but it was only to lean over the desk at him. "So you get to lie to me as much as you want, but I do one thing wrong, and you get to be cold?"

"Yes," he said in the same tone he had earlier replied the opposite, though now he was not feigning his rudeness for a joke.

"I don't understand why you're so angry! You're so hard to talk to, it's like pulling teeth, so I'm sorry if I went about it a bit wrong. I just wanted to be on the same team here, and if I'm saying something in class that's compromising your own position, I want to help—"

"Do not," he suddenly stepped up as far as he could on his side of the desk, speaking sharply to her face, "offer me your help again."

She caved like a timid student under his gaze, leaning away though her eyes earnestly attempted to stay on him. He thought for a moment she was about to sulk from the room, but then he saw some wild emotion flicker across her face, reminding him of one week ago when he had attempted to curse her.

"Oh for—What are you up to that you have to be so secretive about? Trying to summon the Dark Lord back from the dead in the Hogwarts dungeons, are you?"

He nearly stumbled backwards into the chair behind him as he flinched away from her. Before he could even finish steadying himself into a rigidly upright statue, she continued.

"No, you're not! You've just been sitting down here all week, skipping meals, sipping potions that are bad for your health, and doing your job— and _apparently_ a _good_ job of it despite all that, because that Wells boy hasn't gone off and attacked anyone—as a matter of fact, I saw him coming down from the Owlery looking suspiciously _pleasant_ ," she paused to draw breath, sharpening the finger she was pointing at him, "and unless I'm very much mistaken and you've got him under the Imperius Curse to be ordering some necromancy ingredients off a dark seller for you, the worst thing that you're hiding is a potentially illegal number of flobberworms somewhere in your office."

She seemed to run out of steam, though it was an unsteady silence as she looked incredibly embarrassed by her own outburst, as if she could start profusely apologizing at any moment if he wavered from his aghast stance to even slightly perturbed.

Thankfully for her, his mind was a complete blank, something that was starting to feel routine for him every time he thought he had figured out her intentions.

Recovering himself, though only the smallest margin, he finally spoke. "Are you... insane?"

"Are _you_?" she shot back quickly, and it seemed she did have more to say after all, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "For fuck's sake man, I'm not trying to off you, the war is over! I'm not your enemy, so would you get a grip so we can teach these little—gremlins?" Her boldness seemed to fully run out and she grimaced on her last word, covering her mouth with both hands as her cheeks flushed. "Err... Oh, that was loud, I hope no one was in the hall."

He stared at her; from her wide eyes, to her red face, to her hunched shoulders, the perfect image of someone who was being a hundred percent genuine—too genuine even for her own self. If her expression got any more conflicted, he was worried she might just burst into tears next and he would have to go diving for a flask lest the precious material be wasted. Thankfully, she seemed to finally have run out of things to say, and the room lapsed into silence as they both stood there; her staring down at the desk, and him staring at her like she had just revealed that she was actually also the Minister of Magic, a half-goblin, and the star of a muggle reality television show, all at once.

"It... It was an etiquette book," she said quietly, head still bent down as she twirled her fingers together. "What you asked about earlier; that's why I talk like that. All that stuff about mountaintops—it's not exactly true, but I have been kind of... living on a farm. In the middle of nowhere. I'm not very good at talking to people, most of Albus's friends only know me in my other form... so, I tried just cramming in some studying before moving here to teach." Her head shot up as he snorted, but he couldn't have helped it even if he hadn't been still coming out of his state of shock after her tirade. "Don't _laugh_!"

His bewildered sneer vanished as he looked at her face, recognizing vividly the embarrassment of not being naturally gifted in socializing. It was a look he didn't have the heart to keep his eyes on, feeling it was too personal to draw attention to.

"I wasn't... laughing at you," he said quietly. He cleared his throat and continued, raising his eyes with a slowly forming glint in them. "I was merely surprised that you would think someone that has been living among Death Eaters would be offended by language."

She seemed surprised to hear him speak again, and that he wasn't fighting back, pausing for a moment to blink at him before she remembered to answer. "But they're pure-bloods." She gestured to the desk as if this was some explanation beyond his own personal experience. "A bunch of noble families, and the like—"

"Is that what you think of them?" He hadn't meant for his tone to be quite so biting, but it hurt to hear these words out loud. He had thought the same thing as a teenager; had tried so hard to fit in with his more affluent friends, to impress his mother and her side of the family even when they loathed her.

He caught himself before his thoughts could travel down that path any further, and steadied his gaze back to the woman across the desk from him, looking sullen and confused. His mind was racing to catch up to everything she had said, but something else took precedent.

"I tried to curse your hands off," he blurted out. He was not in the habit of blurting things out, ever, but this confession demanded to be let loose.

She looked up in astonishment. "What? When—just now?"

"No, the first night here. That spell I cast at you; it wasn't a silencing charm," he stared at her, needing her to understand and also needing to capture every tiny movement in her face for any possible sign that he was making a mistake. "Appendage separation curse. It can be directed at specific limbs."

She continued to stare back at him, lips parted in shock. Finally, she regained the tiniest hint of her usual amiability, raising a tentative smile. "Does that mean you don't want me to shut up?"

"No," he said smoothly, his own attempted grin much less kind, "it just means I know plenty of more interesting ways to shut someone up." His eyes were locked into place over hers, watching every bit of her reaction. It was exactly as he had expected, the corners of her mouth faltering and the familiar wince that all good fighters for justice did, as if just thinking about what he could mean was too dark for them to handle. He hated it, and he just wanted her to laugh it off like she usually did, way too loud and drawing way too much attention towards them at the staff table.

Eyes cast down, she took a small steadying breath. It was neat about her usual expression when she looked back up at him, save for the appearance of a determination and seriousness in her eye that made him nervous.

"And the necromancy?"

The dark cast over her expression lifted enough for him to see the game she was playing, and the corners of his mouth twitched at the sight of her own bitten back smile. He felt his shoulders relax an inch, and he forced a snider expression, joining in. "I may look into studying it, if I'm being quite honest," he said, and he was, as his smile then fell to a thin line, "but I would never do anything here. And never anything like that. Loyalties or no, I wouldn't."

Her posture seemed to slowly settle back into a state of calm as she gazed up at him, and as he gazed back, her smile returned, though it looked gentler than he had seen it since a week ago.

"You don't have to convince me, Severus. I already know."

It still unnerved him; to be shown such a genuine smile and hear her talk about him as if she knew him in some intimate way... but he believed her. Say what she would, in whatever bashful way she wanted, but he had been right about her. She was a heroine of a particular side with a propensity for meddling and thinking she knew best about the good in all people, and she probably truly believed that he wasn't any danger. It was irksome, it was annoying, it made him want to rebel against it just to prove her wrong... but even with all her associations, even if she didn't particularly like hearing about it, she hadn't chastised him. She just seemed to want things to be... fine. And perhaps they could be.

It took a few tries of opening his mouth before he could say it, but he finally forced out the truth. "He... Wells seemed to think that I fell in line with your description of a Dark wizard. Manipulation and deceit to hide in plain sight."

Her mouth fell open in surprise. "Oh... I..." She sighed heavily, looking suddenly pained by the whole ordeal. "Well, that makes sense then why you wouldn't be just blurting that out in front of Albus. Hm..."

He nodded slowly, remembering the things he had said in front of the headmaster, years ago, with sinister intent hidden behind eagerness for a simple job. In hindsight, it was no wonder he had been turned away, dripping with thoughts of proving himself to a different master in the back of his head, and it was embarrassing to think of his younger self trying to lie to Albus Dumbledore. He remembered, too, eyeing his phoenix, perched far behind him and eyeing him right back, his mind wondering all the secret ways its magical components could be used for dark purposes. And now she stood before him, smiling apologetically, as if she was in the wrong for causing such a fuss over his anger towards her for daring to try and hear his own words out.

"I... would like to actually turn in now, I think," he said quietly.

"Oh. Right..." Looking around the room, and her position in it at her stolen station, she meekly skirted out towards the center of it, leaving no more furniture between them. She didn't, however much he slightly wished it, make a bee-line for the door, hanging back with her fingertips tapping together. "Err... Look, I just wanted to say, whatever you think of me... which after tonight, I'm sure you think I'm a madwoman," she hazarded a grin but he unhelpfully blinked at her, not entirely willing to let her off the hook on that label, and she continued, "I... I'm only a teacher. I'm your colleague, that's all. Well, and I know about your whole post-graduation activities, too, but that should be a good thing." He raised his brows at her euphemism for him joining a cult of blood purists, making it sound like he had gone on a young adult's world tour to find himself, but he stayed quiet. "It should mean that I can—well—" Her face screwed up in determination, and he knew there was no rolling his eyes away from it as she stepped up to face him directly, "I can _help you out_." It sounded more like a threat, and coming from her, he took it as one.

For a moment, he let her fully take in his unwilling glower, stubbornly keeping silent rather than acknowledge her. It was her placing her hands on her hips and tapping her foot, looking like a particularly grumpy teacher, that made him finally sigh through his nose and reply sarcastically, "Whatever you say, Professor."

Her disposition softened, her pursed lips quirking to one side in a smirk. "Good enough for me. Pleasant chatting with you, as always, Professor." He thought he was finally clear of her but she turned back again at the door. "Oh, and please... don't take that Sleeping Draught, alright?" And then she left.

As he hung his cloak up in his bedchamber, he genuinely almost considered taking her advice—almost. Tonight was not a night that he wanted to put his mind through any further rumination, however. His thoughts had been mixing unpleasantly in his brain the moment his office door had closed.

Without the woman herself standing before him, he could, even with his tired mind, think clearly enough to definitively say that she was unwittingly the most disarmingly beguiling person he had met in quite some time. He was almost certain she had no bone in her to be malicious with her intentions, but that alone was cause for worry. She was like a bewitched toy that Dumbledore had sent his way, and just as mechanically, he was sure that she wouldn't think twice about repeating everything she heard, probably because she didn't even realize the position it would put him in. She probably thought her master to be infallible and perfect in his judgments—because she believed the good in people, and all that nonsense. And even if she believed he himself had good in him, he knew who it was that would be the final judge of that. It wasn't her that he recoiled from, as personally perturbing as she was, but the man looming behind her every thought and action.

She was pleasant enough on her own, though.

—

The second week of the school-year found him just as busy as the last, though slightly more well-adjusted to his schedule, with more consistent paperwork and menial duties to be done. The paperwork, at least, became a nice respite—so long as his table-mate in the research library was quietly doing her own work and not pestering him for extra ink or being entirely distracting brushing her hair out needlessly. And in the next couple of weeks after that, he even found time to actually get some research done, though he had to answer to inquisitions with every new book and declare that it was not necromancy, but other related topics. Before he knew it, he was staring at a calendar that was asserting to him that a month had passed, but his mind would not accept it.

Two months. With the first only a fuzzy static in his memory, and the second a blur of distractions, two months had passed leaving him with no longer any comprehension of time. It felt too long, and equally entirely too short, for someone to have been dead.

He remembered reading something penned by a friend of a ghost who had dutifully copied down his companion's musings: as a ghost, just a soul left behind with no body, no longer shackled by a ticking clock, time ceased to matter so much. It passed in a haze, with seasons and holidays and entire eras blending together. He wondered if the same could be true if you died and were brought back to life, only the opposite: a body without a soul. It was impossible, of course, given everything he very well knew on the topic, but as his black eyes stared unblinkingly at the little square throwing the day's date in his face, he wondered if something hadn't gone horribly wrong in his case.

But of course, with him, everything had gone wrong. Everything except that he was still here living and breathing while others were not. And that was the problem.

As he stared at the calendar, he wondered how much time was enough before you were supposed to feel grief and guilt start to fade, or if no such amount existed. It was something he would never be able to brew or bottle, and no number of hours skipped at night without dreams would ever add up to. He was a soul shackled to the living, bound as anyone, by time.

* * *

_— *** —_


	4. Return to Ash

_— *** —_

* * *

A chill crept through the open great oak doors of the entrance hall. He pulled his cloak tighter around him as he stepped through, sighing with weary compliance as he took up his post just outside at the bottom of the stone steps, waving his wand over them as he went to clean up the many muddy tracks caked coldly to the smooth surfaces.

The last week of September had brought with it a chilly rain that had left the grounds moist and blown down a colorful display of leaves from the changing trees, giving October a very seasonally appropriate start as it deadened the last bits of summer. A solitary small student now looked to be lumbering up the path to the castle with at least half of these leaves stuck in what looked like huge leafy discs of red and yellow to the bottoms of his shoes.

"Summers," Severus called with accusatory sharpness, "just what do you think you're doing—bringing in half the forest?"

"Sir—help," he pleaded, hopping as fast as his awkwardly shaped shoes could take him up to the professor. "They—a-a sixth-year cast some jinx on my shoes and I can't get all this stuff off."

"Then remove... your shoes."

"But—sir—"

Severus raised his eyebrows. The boy continued gawking, but eventually complied, leaving his cumbersome shoes within enough distance that he could teeter to the first stone step on socked feet.

"Whoever it was, I will see them pass by and make sure that they remove their jinx and return these to you," he said, though with an air that it sounded like more work than he was hoping for. "And do be careful not to slip on those socks—Professor McGonagall has already had to escort one student to the hospital wing with a broken nose for slipping on mud."

The boy picked his way up the steps with much more care, walking almost as though he still had his jinxed shoes on as he weirdly danced through the doors. Once he was gone, Severus turned and picked his own way through the muddy grass towards the side of the steps behind a large bush so that he could watch in the shadows and not have to look so conspicuously like a lowly doorman.

It was McGonagall that had elected him for this job, practically shouting his name across the entrance hall as he walked by as if he was the student in trouble for trekking in mud and causing the kerfuffle to break out. At least there didn't seem to be too many students still out as the early evening brought with it lower temperatures and dinner, which he had not gotten a chance to even sniff at yet given the interruption.

"Deserting your post? You traitor."

He glanced over his shoulder around the other side of the large bush then turned back with a roll of his eyes. "I can see anyone walking by perfectly fine from here. Odd—I didn't see you step out."

"That _is_ odd," Freya said, coming to stand next to him with one hand holding her chin in contemplation. "I wonder how I got out here? I could have sworn I was just at dinner, noticing a very empty seat next to me and about to cut into a lovely grapefruit."

"Perhaps you should have stayed there," he offered with sour sweetness.

"Now, why would I do that when my lovely colleague here is putting up the good fight against such dangerous forces as muddy floors?"

"McGonagall told you that, did she?" He finally looked down at her, annoyed as she nodded. "She's already at dinner? But she's making _me_ stand out here."

Freya offered him a consolatory grimace, but looked amused. "Probably shouldn't have given her Quidditch captain detention. She's quite competitive."

"Yes, well, so am I," he said with a glance towards the Quidditch pitch far in the distance where his own House team was currently practicing in their allotted time that he had signed them up for.

"Good luck trying to win that," she said with not much faith. "McGonagall will put you in the mud herself." He scoffed, but she continued with a change of subject before he could voice his thoughts on the deputy headmistress. "Actually, I'm out here because I wanted to talk to you."

"You can talk to me literally any other time of the day."

She tilted her head back in exasperation. "Yes, I _could_ , technically speaking. But I mean actually talk and not get ignored because you're obliterating a muffin with a breadknife or reading so seriously you just snap at me."

He narrowed his eyes, remembering he wanted to finish a particular book later that night and craving dinner, barely taking in her intent to get his attention away from the path he was staring lazily at. His eyes strayed a quick glance in her direction. "What do you want?"

Apparently what she had to say was deemed, by her at least, more important than the dangers of mud, because she stepped right in front of him to say her piece. "I wanted to know if you've gotten any mail recently. Perhaps from old friends...?"

His eyes snapped down at hers at once, looking slandered. "Excuse me?"

She raised her brows in confusion at his reaction. "Old professors...?"

"Oh." He relaxed at once, realizing he wasn't being accused of conspiring with 'old friends'. There was only one professor that he would count as being on friendly terms with that wasn't at the school—though, none of his old professors at the school would be sending him letters even if they weren't. Slughorn wasn't exactly a friend either, and it was odd hearing him referred to as such, but he wasn't sure what else he would categorize him as now. "Yes, I believe I got something a few days ago..."

She nodded up at him, imploringly. "Yes, and...?"

He looked back down with vague indifference, shrugging and shaking his head.

"Severus," she said, drawing out his name and quietly clapping her hands together under her chin, "did you read the letter?"

He made her wait another moment before he shook his head again, just as disinterested.

Her head tilted to one side and she scrunched up her face in a pained smile. "Did you throw it directly into the fire, or did you just stuff it in a drawer?"

"The fire," he said with a mild smirk, looking over her own head of fiery hair towards the path to check that nobody was there. The letter, with its beautifully penned signature and broken gaudy wax seal, had been stuffed in a bottom drawer of his desk after he had finished reading it, but it was more fun to annoy her. She sighed heavily and dropped her arms, but he continued before she could complain, "I don't need to read it to know what it is, Slughorn exclusively sends letters to invite people to parties."

"Correct, he does! _So...?_ "

As much as he was enjoying being painfully unhelpful, he had to end the charade there, dragging his gaze back down to her with disdain. "You can't be serious."

"Five galleons," she shot at him, and smiled brightly at his incredulous look. "I knew you'd say no, so I came prepared."

"You're bribing me to go to a party?" She nodded resolutely, patting the pocket of her robes which to his disbelief actually jingled. "You're serious? Ah, and this is why you didn't want to do it in front of anyone—shady business, bribery."

"It's not that shady."

"You're right, it isn't." He turned up his nose, but he was peering around the bush like a particularly shady individual before his next words. "And it isn't that much money either. I could get five times that for a single potion on the black market."

Her jaw dropped indignantly. "Wh- You-! Just _what_ have you been getting into the past few years?"

"Holidaying in Tahiti."

"At fifty galleons a pop, you better have been."

"And what about you? I don't recall ever reading that phoenixes spit gold. Or is that money you don't spend on housing since you can just live in a tree?"

"I'm doing fine for myself, thank you very much," she said with a haughty air, twirling her hair around her finger.

It was his turn to look surprised. "Don't tell me you... charge?"

"Well, I do have to have self-respect, don't look at me like that." She was ducking her head, avoiding his eyes as she mumbled, "Not for anything that heals or save lives, though, just the feathers."

"How positively—"

" _Don't_."

"—noble of you," he spoke over her with a sneer. She was grimacing up at him and her fingers seemed to be twisting her lock of hair more out of annoyance now. He looked the long singled-out strand up and down, wondering if it hurt or if sensation didn't travel between forms like that. Another idea came to him then. "Alright... I'll go. For one of those."

"One of what?" Her fingers let go of the twist and it unraveled.

"A feather. And the five galleons, as well."

She wasn't standing quite close enough to him to laugh directly in his face, but then again, her laugh was so loud it not only hit him but bounced off the stone walls behind and around him, echoing out into the grounds as he blinked in mild annoyance. Her expression dropped to a stony straight mask in one beat of his jostled heart. "Absolutely not."

"Fine. Have fun at your party."

"Wait—Okay, alright, you can have one."

"What was that about self-respect...?"

"Ugh, stop being so difficult! Just the one, alright?"

"And you wouldn't happen to be lying, just pretending to agree to give me one so that I'll go?"

"Me? Lie? Never."

He stared down into her wide golden eyes, blinking innocently up at him. His mouth pulled into a tight smile and she returned one of her own right back at him.

He couldn't fathom why this was being brought up with such importance. There were plenty of holidays and celebrations throughout the year, and he had zero plans for any of them, except to keep it that way. He did not feel like celebrating or being merry, and besides, Slughorn's letter had noted the date of the party not even on Halloween day, though he advertised it as a party for such in his writing. Apparently it was something to do with the Hogwarts staff having too much staffing to do on actual Halloween night, what with the students trying to get into mischief, which, in his memory of being a student, was accurate, but he didn't really care if he missed 'celebrating Halloween' to monitor the halls. What was he going to do—carve a bloody pumpkin?

Either his guard-bird was getting sick of being cooped up in the library watching him like a hawk, or she was trying to push him into socializing like it was charity work, both of these aggravated him equally for different reasons.

Before he could make up his mind, the sounds of laughing voices carried from further down the pathway, and they both turned their attention to see a group of students as they passed. He scrutinized them, but they looked to be fourth-year girls, not a roving gang of jinxing sixth-years, though they did point at the jinxed shoes at the bottom of the steps with interest. Freya, closer to the pathway with a better view around the stone banister, suddenly stepped out of the hiding space and called out to them.

"Oi! Are those yours? Where do you think you're going with them?"

The group of girls all seemed to have been startled by her appearance, as he heard multiple gasps. "Professor! We were, err, just looking."

"Alright... Actually, what are those- shoes?" Freya, hands on her hips, turned her question towards her shadowy hidden colleague.

"A first year had an unfortunate incident." He reluctantly revealed himself, coming to stand by her side and giving the girls another start. "I believe he's currently walking around the castle in socks, looking for the counter-jinx to—"

One of the girls suddenly shrieked, pointing at them. "What were you two doing behind a bush?"

Both professors gaped at the girl, glanced at each other in mutual disgust, and then rounded dangerous glares back at the accuser, who was being shushed by her giggling friends.

"Detention," he said with certainty.

"No, surely not," said Freya, waving this away. "Five points from Ravenclaw for letting your clever brain run amuck, however."

"I can issue detention for whatever I deem fit," he argued, irritated at his judgement being challenged in front of students.

"Not over this though—A rude comment?"

"A rude comment to a _professor_ ," he hissed, turning more towards Freya than the students gathered on the steps, waiting to see if their friend would get detention or not.

She met his stance as well, directing her authoritative pose on him now. "Excuse me? _Two_ professors."

"Even more reason to give her detention."

"You're being way too harsh—"

"Five points is not enough for the disrespect—"

"You can't just give everyone detention; you'll never leave the dungeons—"

"Err—Professors?"

They both whipped their heads back to the small group, who were now staring between the pair of them with raised brows on their young faces. "Can we... can we go?"

Severus opened his mouth but Freya beat him to it, "Yes, of course—five points from Ravenclaw and that's all—"

" _Ten_ ," he countered, "ten points from Ravenclaw, and think before you speak next time if you're going to be representing that House."

The fourth-year girls jogged up the steps with a mix of groaning and giggling, apparently unimpressed with this punishment. He clenched his jaw, wishing he had taken more points, and turning back to Freya to blame her for this. But she was looking after the girls with similar distaste.

"Good you got in that extra five, I felt too bad to do it myself," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I swear—they think we're like their older siblings, not teachers."

"Don't speak for me," he said a bit too defensively, "my students usually respect me."

She raised her hands indignantly. "Are you blaming me? You were the one hiding in a bush."

"You just _had_ to follow me around."

"Alright then, I'll shout into your brain from halfway across the school next time," she said with annoyance. "Now get back in there, you scandalous creep, I'm not done." And he was shooed back behind the bush against his wishes, looking over his shoulder to make sure no more students were nearby.

"What?" He conspicuously positioned himself completely out of view of the path, folding his arms and leaning against the castle wall a good few feet away from her, but she merely walked closer to him anyway, apparently not taking the hint.

As if they had not been interrupted, she smiled brightly, but he recognized it as her dangerously fake one with no warmth in her eyes. "You cannot honestly tell me you don't want an excuse to get away from students for an evening."

"Yes, about that," he drawled, looking up to the tops of the bush where the leaves were browned from all the months of sun, "as hard I'm sure it is for you to imagine, I do not wish to be around _anyone_ " —he looked pointedly at her— "not just students."

She sighed in exasperation, jumping back into her pleading tone. "Oh, come on. Don't you want to see all your..."

He raised his brows, eyes squinted.

"All your... old potion's professors?" She grimaced at her own lame ending.

"Ah, yes," he said nodding with fake reverence, "all one of them. Splendid idea."

"Well... Well, Flitwick likes you just fine. And McGonagall-"

"Put me out here like I'm the new caretaker," he interjected harshly. He had his doubts about Flitwick as well, but he didn't exactly want to go down the list of people who regarded him with varying degrees of disdain and grade them individually.

"More like a Halloween decoration, honestly," she said, tilting her head and looking him up and down. At his confused (and annoyed) expression, she supplied, "You look like a vampire."

"Thank you," he enunciated, voice politely dripping with venom, "I have never before been compared to a vampire, not once in my life."

She looked utterly perplexed by this, and he knew she was about to say something extremely annoying in response to his sarcasm. "That's weird—have you been hanging around a bunch of incredibly stupid individuals?"

"Just the one, lately."

She flashed another smile at him, seemingly unperturbed at being the idiot in the room—or grounds.

He supposed she didn't have much to be defensive of. He had found, in between grading and reading, if he talked to her, for instance, about something that he was researching, she was plenty intelligent. It was a shame, really, about her personality.

His tongue slid across the back of his teeth as he deliberated. "Is the feather still on the table, or are you willing to admit to that lie?"

"Not willing to admit to that lie just yet, no," she said with a sly smile, brushing her hair to the front of her shoulder and taunting him with a faint momentary materialization of a single golden feather. "As far as illicit activities, however, how do you feel about-"

"What?" His shoulders hunched ever so slightly.

She blinked, surprised out of her smile. "What—huh? I'm talking about your black market potion selling, and bribery—and I was going to say gambling. How about taking some risk and leaving it a toss-up whether I'll actually give you a feather after the party? What did you think I was talking about?"

He stared into the bush behind her, blank-faced. "Nothing. Alright, sounds fair."

"Really?" For the first time in the conversation, her whole face shown with genuine enthusiasm, leaning in to look him in the eye as if she could hardly believe it.

His lip curled and he leaned back against the castle more. "I'll... think about it."

"That's good enough for me," she said cheerily, apparently having not expected much. "You've got loads of time to think about it, anyway. Well, I'll let you get back to your post. Enjoy!"

He gave one dismissive nod of his head as she waved, watching her go... right to the wall next to him, where she leaned her back against it as well, hands clasped over her robes in waiting. He stared at her from the corners of narrowing eyes as she craned her neck to look round at the path, checking for students. After a moment of this, the corners of her mouth finally twitched under his gaze, and, not taking her eyes off the bush straight ahead, she whispered with amusement, "I can't actually leave you out here alone in the cold, it's too sad. I promise I won't invite you to anymore parties though."

He blinked languidly, holding the muscles in his face back from smiling even in disdain. He wanted to make a comment about how he was most definitely not cold, but he knew it would just goad her into teasing him. In any case, if she was going to stand vigil with him as the last of the students came in for dinner, he wasn't about to have a repeat of the fourth-year girls. Pushing himself away from the wall, he asked casually, "Not planning any early Christmas parties?"

She scoffed behind him, following his lead out to the bottom of the steps to stand closer to the path, "Me? Severus, it's barely October."

"And yet, here we are, setting up for Halloween," he said with irony, stowing his hands in the pockets of his robes under his cloak. "Why not try for Easter?"

"Ooh—So sorry, I can't, I have plans," she winced apologetically at his side.

"Secret organization party?"

Her eyebrows raised and she cast a glance around, but the only students were far in the distance, coming back from the Quidditch pitch. "I don't think you can get into those, even as a plus-one."

"And I am devastated by this, truly." He kept his eyes down the path so that he would not have to deal with knowing if she believed him fully on that. "Gobstones party?"

"Is that even a thing?"

"I assure you, to some people, it is," he said looking back at her with a weary expression, though more for himself as she would not understand. She laughed heartily anyway, and his brow furrowed. He had run out of imagined parties to be harassed about, and they lapsed into a mostly comfortable silence.

Eventually, the Slytherin Quidditch team had made their way within earshot, and at once got an earful about their thoroughly caked shoes, not being allowed to set a single muddy foot on the stone steps without cleaning themselves up first. Unfortunately, the culprit of the sticky shoes was also found among the team, and Severus pulled the guilty beater aside to issue a warning about McGonagall being out for vengeance... so he had better only be jinxing first years well out of view. He briefly spoke to Wells in passing, and then they all headed in for dinner at last.

The Wells boy had been doing mostly fine since their incident at the start of the school-year. Severus had spoken with him only once more, and only in half-privacy, pulling him aside in the hall before breakfast one morning to check on the status of his letter writing. The boy had been distant and mumbly, but it was hard to tell if this was because of anything to do with his personal life, or just embarrassment at being called out by his professor in front of his group of friends. Severus hadn't thought much of the incident, until much later when it became apparent that showing any kind of attention publicly to the boy had been a mistake, as now his whole group of friends, most of them with questionable parents themselves, had gotten it in their heads to also want special attention from him—or what they thought was special, assuming in their minds some other kind of conversations taking place between him and Wells. He had been able to keep them at bay, however, with the help of Wells' apparent unenthusiasm to share the truth of his own incident.

All in all, in between trying to keep students from blurting out unwanted information about their imbecilic ideas on Dark Arts to him every chance they could corner him alone, and his own troubles with trying to study the Dark Arts in the staff library without being tailed by Freya, he was leaning towards believing Slughorn that teachers did indeed need some time to themselves away from the castle, though he wasn't sure the old professor would really understand his current woes. He had been teaching during the war, but had he dealt with the same things the new potion's teacher was going through, post-war? As October went on, Severus found that he might actually want to have a conversation with Slughorn—however stilted by lies and masked realities it may be.

As for his party companion—for he was sure that Freya would be showing up to his office door the night of the party, ready to glue herself to his side the whole night unless he could perform the world's first human unsticking counter-charm—she had been her usual cheery obnoxious self consistently ever since reading him the riot act in his own office during the first week of school. There had been a brief couple of days afterward where she had kept staring at him during meals with wide-eyes, and he had assumed she was waiting for him to get back at her for her callous speech. He didn't have a single thing to fire back with, however, because the woman hadn't been the least bit wrong, and he wasn't in the habit of arguing with redheads when they screamed at him for being an absolute mess, because he was finding, by his statistics, they tended to be correct. He was simply trying to ignore the whole incident and correct his behavior before he could be called out again. He made sure to attend breakfasts regularly once he had his sleep schedule on track, to keep up appearances of not being a dungeon-crawling ghost of a human being, though he still felt capable of winning that title should a tourney ever open up.

Into October, though, this was all old news. With over a month of school under everyone's belts, things had settled into familiarity, and the only events that garnered interest now were the impending slew of seasonal holidays in the coming months, the more important (to some) season starting in November (Quidditch), and news from the outside world, though the students cared less for this than the staff. There was nothing overly terrible to note, however, at least nothing that was new to them. The occasional attack, arrest, acquittal, death—or death sentence—the usual affair. Sequestered as they were in Hogwarts, with much to do and constantly occupied minds, they could usually forget about the morning paper by lunchtime.

It helped as well that Severus had his own personal distraction in Freya. She was better than gobstones, and filled him with slightly less dread than the game itself; and if he was being honest, he was glad she had a reliable off switch so that she could be tolerable enough to be around, otherwise he would have broken down from the oppressive silence of being alone with his thoughts long ago. The incessant woman was like a waking Sleeping Draught, able to lead him down a rabbit hole of conversation at a moment's notice, just as he had first approached her for. He had been right about her; as he found out, he had been right about a lot of things. Chiefly, that she absolutely would not, under any circumstances, leave him be.

When he had first realized she was going to be following him around and had been fine to play along with this charade set down by Dumbledore seemingly as a rule of him being under thumb, he had not realized just how many days were in a week, a month. He had been forced to get used to this constant attention very quickly, realizing after the first time he went for a walk on the grounds to clear his head and spotted a red and gold bird flying high above, he would only get alone time in his dungeons behind a locked door. This wasn't so bad though, as he did in fact spend plenty of time in the dungeons. Also, his guard seemed to have gotten bored very quickly with constantly keeping an eye on him and his leash had gotten longer, so that at first, he would only spot her checking his location before disappearing from view, and now he didn't even notice if she was still checking on him, but assumed by her cryptic knowing remarks every now and then that she was.

Mostly he just saw her sit at the same booth seat table on the top floor of the research library, quietly doing her work or reading. Every time he walked back up the spiraling stairs in the room, carrying texts and archives on his current topic of interest, she seemed to alternate her task. Grading, writing in her planner, or reading—though this last one wasn't at all close to his version, consisting of his scholarly pursuits. He had been appalled one day to find that she was reading not research, but a fiction novel, with some garish cover containing a witch in extravagant robes that alternated between looking around her tiny painted landscape, and holding her wand into the air in what appeared to be an act that caused her extreme anguish.

" _What..._ is _that?_ " He punctuated his ejected question by dropping down his heavy stack of reading material with a bang as he sat down.

But she only held a finger up to silence him, keeping her darting eyes on the pages before her. "Shut up."

"Sorry?" The only times that she told him to shut up were when he was harassing her particularly well with phoenix lore quotes, but never for silence or concentration.

After a moment, she sighed and put her book down, but she did not look up at him, instead massaging her temples and blocking half her face from his view. "Listen, I have work to do, alright? I can't be at your beck and call every time you want me around, Severus."

Normally it would have sounded perfectly sweetly sarcastic, but from what he could see of her face, her mouth remained a thin line and her delivery was off. He wasn't at all sure what to make of this, and simply cracked on with his own more important reading. It wasn't until he was halfway through a detailed experiment document that he heard another sound from her. His concentration broken by the mere sound of another human in the vicinity, he glanced up. He was so shocked by what he saw, he almost choked on his inhale of breath, coughing into his hand as his head came fully up.

She looked up at the sound and their eyes met, only hers were filled with tears and he was looking like he might invent a way to Disparate on Hogwarts grounds in a singular stroke of genius and desperate need, horrified. She drew in a great breath, and then she broke down in sobs and he could only listen.

"She—she—Princess Deidra's whole family—and she's reunited with them—and—and—it's just brilliant, isn't it?" Her left hand was waving around as she spoke, but her right was fumbling in the pocket of her robes, and what he saw her pull out finally made his chest relax as everything, for the most part, clicked into place. She sniffed, squeezing her eyes shut, and as she did, a tear fell into the small glass vial she held to her cheek.

He could make sense of it, sure enough, but he didn't exactly find that sense comforting whatsoever, and he continued to openly stare in horror.

After a minute of this, he finally swallowed, and said shallowly, "Why... why don't you just read the morning paper?"

This was apparently not the correct thing to say, as she waved her free hand at him in a weepy rage, her voice sounding much too loud for the library and much too strange from her normal warm tones. "Because it's bloody awful, you insensitive git! It's depressing! I just want to read about" —she was interrupted by a sob and she shed more tears into the vial— "anything else."

"O—... okay—"

"There's people dying all over the world, Severus!"

He nodded mechanically, his face contorted as if he was hearing about death for the first time and the whole concept sounded barking mad and abominable.

She looked down at her tear-catcher, noticing that its tiny container was mostly full. She gave one last sniff, blinking the last of the moisture back into her eyes, and seemed to melt back to normal, although he could see her hand was shaking even as she snapped and disappeared the vial into thin air. She looked back at him with a mild expression. "Sorry. Tough times and all that." And she shoved her fiction novel to the side, bringing forward a stack of yet to be graded papers instead.

He only witnessed her do this once more in the next two weeks of October, thankfully, and the second time he did not interrupt her. He found she cried much more quietly without being stoked into speech, and apart from being too scared to look up from the paper he was grading, he found this reserved muted ordeal to be almost worse in some way. It didn't trigger anything in chest like her voice sometimes did, feeling like an outside force was being cast upon him, but instead his chest momentarily twinged all on its own. She carried on perfectly happy afterwards when they both had finished their work and were leaving the library, parting ways on the third floor as she went to her chambers and he to the dungeons. He had his own interpretation of this, and apart from the very unkind thoughts that having a savior complex was a disease of the mind, or that this was the price for meddling so much into wizard affairs, he was mostly concerned with the question of why she would do something like that in front of someone. She didn't seem to care a single lick that he was in the room, feet from her, either time. She hadn't even acted startled or disgruntled when he came up the steps the first time. Perhaps if he had tears with magical healing properties that needed to be delivered at a moment's notice, he wouldn't think of it was emotional or embarrassing either—only it definitely was because she needed to be emotional to do it, and he definitely would. He didn't dare ever ask her about it though, however many questions he had, or however casually she shrugged and smiled.

In a way, it was entertaining to try and contort his mind into understanding that this was the famed phoenix; the creature that saved people during the war, cried on their wounds, sang strength into them, took killing curses meant for them, only to be spotted back in action above a hide-out months later like some great fiery annoyance—and she was also the type of person to not eat the peel of her apple, crinkling her nose in distaste as she went at it with a dainty almost doll-sized knife some mornings. It almost made his head hurt to compare between the deadly serious enraged voices of Death Eaters who had had the misfortune of being spotted by her, and her own voice as it gently chided schoolchildren for trying to charm their hair different colors only to wind up bald, but it was oddly amusing to him. Especially her tiny fruit knife, because he knew several different flaying spells that would work so much better, but he enjoyed staying silent.

On the Saturday morning of the party, however, she was eating a plum when he took his seat to her right, and she beamed at him with barely contained excitement. He, slightly less enthusiastic than her eleven-out-of-ten, simply tucked in to some toast with a sleepy nod, wishing he had slept a couple more hours if he was going to be up late, but his body was adamantly not breaking schedule now that it had been achieved.

The day proceeded as normal minus the detentions he sometimes gave on weekends. He had specifically moved Dayna McGowen, who had exploded her and her neighbor's cauldrons earlier in the week, to next week, giving her ample time to get a new one in the mail so that he could have her break it in sorting out frogspawn from newt spawn on Monday. He was halfway through brewing two different potions, locked away in his office, when he checked the clock to prepare a countdown of no less than forty-five minutes of steep time and realized he had absolutely no idea when he should be leaving the castle.

Slughorn had written specifically vague instructions on the time, Severus knew, because the man liked everyone to arrive one by one, dazed and confused, while he shepherded them in, the only one in the room who knew what was going on. But his instructions did state an exact address, some place in Hogsmeade Village that sounded like an event hosting spot, but was tucked in a neighborhood near a forest. He would have a bit of a ways to walk, but it would be nice to get out for once. Enjoy the peace and quiet of nature. Alone, for sure...

Several hours later, as he hesitantly opened his office door half expecting his guard to already be there waiting with a knowing smile on her face, he was surprised to find that he was quite alone. And as he made his way out of the castle into the faded evening light, passing by a couple other staff and ignoring their curious glances in his direction as they probably wondered why he was going the same way, he felt even more alone. It wasn't until, as he cut away to a smaller footpath through trees but going, he knew, to the same place as the main road, that he was certain he actually had privacy. And that was when, of course, a sound he had not heard in quite some time cracked behind him and he turned around to see Freya standing there on the path, smiling mildly, as if she had been walking through the forest the whole time.

"And here I thought I might get a moment of peace," he said, turning back to continue walking. "Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?"

She jogged to catch up to his side, matching his pace. "Sorry, didn't know what to wear."

His feet took a wrong step in the dirt as he did a double take back at her, but she was only wearing her regular casual robes of brown with a matching cowl overtop. "Were we supposed to wear something in particular?"

She quirked a brow at his minor panic. "No, I don't think so. I just did my hair," she smoothed a hand over the long loose braid drawn over her shoulder, "and I have these."

He had to stop as she stopped, holding one foot up for inspection and slightly lifting the hem of her robes, showing enough ankle to make a Victorian priest cry—or just any normal person for that matter, because the socks she had on were an abhorrent purple and orange with little embroidered black bats and golden pumpkins.

"That's... dressed up for you, is it?"

"Says the man wearing the same thing he does every day."

He glanced down at his all-black cloak, robes, and button-down shirt underneath. "It's fine—" But apparently it was not fine, because at the sound of a snap, he suddenly also had an uncomfortable red and gold necktie around his collar, and when he looked up in exasperation, Freya's pointed finger was the culprit. "Brilliant color choice for the Head of Slytherin," he sneered, wondering how long she had been waiting to do that.

"Hang on, let me just—" She held up her fingers, but he was cringing away from the line of fire, worried he would show up to the party without eyebrows.

"No, I don't want—" With another snap, his tie changed to green and silver.

"Oh, no, you look like an overgrown student—"

"The color is not the—" It changed to a muted grey now and he whipped out his wand in anger, but Freya was holding up a hand imploringly. The tie was changed to a pure black, but it didn't matter as he was already pointing his wand with the intention of vanishing it from ever disgracing his attire again.

"Wait, wait! Hold _on_ , just let me look," she pleaded, stepping up and hovering a hand over his wand arm. She didn't touch him, but he hesitated, remaining still while he was inspected—most of him anyway, as he still rolled his eyes with much movement. "Hm..." She tapped a single finger on the tie and at first when he looked, he couldn't see a difference, but then realized that the black was more muted, matching his faded fabrics that he hadn't noticed were so faded till just then. She stepped back to get a better view of the full effect. "You're really best suited in black, aren't you? Oh, but now you look like you're going to a funeral... Alright, I give up, you can get rid of it."

He lowered his wand, adjusting the knot at his neck to make it slightly more livable. "It's fine."

"What—after all that? You like it?"

"Well, it's better than your own fashion choices," he said, casting a disdainful look down at her ankles as they turned to continue on their way.

This path was less traveled, meant to give those who chose to walk a place to do so while carriages were in use, and the vegetation at the edge hadn't been so bitten back by the cold autumn nights as to neaten the path into a straight corridor under the canopy of trees. The whole effect, in the withering light of the evening that shown through the bare trees onto the ground blanketed in rich red and orange, set the image of the season better than any decorations inside the castle could have, though its floating jack-o-lanterns and real bats were indeed charming.

This season, he felt, was perfectly matched to his preferred attire, black tie or no. Despite the fervent excitement of schoolchildren and the colorful display of nature, this was a season dampened in decay, ushering in the need for a ceremony of shedding old dried things, crumpling them up, and giving them back into the earth. It felt right to dress for the occasion of the world around them going out like a light for the end of the year.

In contrast, to his left, the phoenix woman looked to match the season in a different way, embodying the very bright leaves and brown trees. It was odd—he always thought of phoenixes as creatures so full of life that they could not be contained by a simple death, bursting from the ashes with some essence of magic that ran powerfully deep. Perhaps it was just because he had always looked at the birds like they were hoarding their wealth of life, and he was greedy to take it just like any foolish wizard who wished to toy around with fundamentals of life itself. But she didn't hoard her magic, and she didn't seem any less at home with the cycle of life and death than the nature around them.

He caught sight of purple and orange as he glanced at her, and his internal musings suddenly fell flat. She noticed his glare and smiled serenely.

"Do you get that," he nodded down at her socks, indicating her horrid sense of fashion, "from Dumbledore?"

"From Albus? Oh, perhaps. He is always wearing quite colorful robes himself. He ought to be wearing something spectacular tonight."

There was a sinking feeling in his shoulders at the knowledge that the headmaster would be showing up as well, but hopefully his plan to avoid all interaction besides Slughorn would succeed. He had not even thought about this possibility, and it now seemed odd that he was the one with the phoenix by his side while Dumbledore would show up without his own pet.

"Are you..." He paused, trying to find his words, but also feeling odd being the one to initiate conversation. He always seemed to be unnerved when she lapsed into silence, like a live wire was nearby and he should address it, but only cautiously. He tried again, "Ah... What is he to you? A father?"

She raised her brows and then lowered them almost as quickly in a deep frown. "Albus? Err... no," she replied without sounding the least bit sure herself.

It was his turn to raise his brows at her, as he asked a second question, "Then perhaps...? Something else?"

She coughed loudly raising her hands to both cover her mouth and as if to fend off his implication. "Severus, good lord, stop. Go back to being quiet again, it's still a lovely evening out."

He eyed her reaction with interest, smirking at being on the opposite side of this table for once. "Too old, perhaps? But I thought you were a hundred?"

" _Nearly_ a hundred—and yes he's too—oh, I don't even want to talk about this, just drop it," she said, waving him off. Her hands went to her braid, anxiously flipping the tiny end. "Phoenix years."

"Phoenix years, right," he said, nodding as if the cryptic answer made any more sense the times it was repeated. "Well, if he's too old... how about that Gryffindor pervert—I mean, Prefect—boy, then?"

She made another choking sound but this time she sounded like she was laughing, though pained. "STOP! Stop right there—no, no, no. Adamson is a student, and he's just-"

"He's getting a bit creative with his brown-nosing, isn't he?"

"He's..." She looked for a moment to be reaching for kind words for her student that had been continually trying to get her attention since the beginning of the school-year, but she apparently could not find any. "Well, he's an incessant little creep, sure, but he's—well, he's just a boy. And he hasn't done anything aside from annoy me in the halls. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Severus refrained from voicing his opinion that he would look into testing if she was impervious to Love Potions if he was in her shoes, but it was only October, after all. Maybe the boy would forget about her and go actually date someone he had a chance with (that wasn't a teacher and was his own age). He quietly doubted it, though. Teenaged boys could be very stupid about that sort of thing.

"Why must you talk about the most embarrassing things right now before something so fun?" She was walking with her head tilted back, eyes on the branches overhead that passed by in varying degrees of bare or coated in yellow, and he wasn't sure if she actually was embarrassed, as she looked perfectly contented.

"Would you rather I talk about the fascinating history of the Imperius Curse?" He answered her look of skepticism with a shrewd smile.

"Severus," she said sighed wearily, shaking her head, "you can go on about it if you want, I don't mind, but... would you—let's just try to have some fun tonight, alright? _Happy_ Halloween and all that." Her grin looked a little too mean and forced for her suggestion, as if imitating a jack-o-lantern.

His own smile faded completely, and he looked back to the path ahead, stepping on the fallen leaves a bit harder than before. He had the distinct feeling that his original suspicions about her intentions of coercing him into going to this party were very much in line, and he was about to be dragged into tedious conversation with a whole slew of people that still eyed him warily, plus whatever strangers Slughorn had undoubtedly invited. He kept his fascinating history facts of curses to himself, and they hardly spoke the rest of the trek into town.

The address led them to one side of Hogsmeade, passed its own festive decorations and adornments on High Street, and down a street that ran adjacent to a forest, where shops petered out into converted homes and finally cottages, with only a few scattered public buildings left in sight. It looked like they were going to a neighborhood, when a left turn showed that the short road ended at a park with a large pavilion in the middle and the forest encircling the whole area. Normally it looked to be an open building with only pillars holding up a wood roof, but now it was decorated with great colorful sheets between these, giving the effect of a very sturdy tent with a promisingly cozy interior if the large chimney sticking out the top was any indication to go by. There were what looked like floating strings of lights from the building all the way to the trees yards away, decorations everywhere, and, most notably, an exceptional amount more people than he had anticipated.

They had come to a stop at the end of the road, just outside of stepping foot into the grass, and as he looked to his side, he noticed with much surprise Freya seemed to be mirroring his trepidation. She glanced back at him and her eyebrows knit together. "You don't... happen to have any other party invitations we could just leave for, do you?"

"Are you _—You_ dragged _me_ here," he hissed with exasperation, trying to keep his voice down as a group of three passed by into the gathering.

"I didn't think there would be this many people! I thought it was just going to be Hogwarts staff!" She gave one last alarmed scan of the park before turning back to him, sizing him up, and scuttling behind him as she ushered him forward with a wave of her hand. "Yes, well, go on then."

He turned around in confusion to look at her. "What? You go!"

"No, but—you're taller, so I can just hide back here."

"You—This was your idea!"

"Listen, Severus, one of us has to take one for the team, and you're better at blending into a crowd, so just—" She made the shooing gesture at him again, cozying up to his side as if ready to follow, but he fully stepped away from her, leaving her to look panicked at being exposed. "Wait—!"

She caught up to him as he headed off along the outer ring of the clearing, wedging herself between him and the trees so that she was out of the line of sight from the main gathering. So much for a brave bird. His plans for socialization had involved melting into the shadows when Freya would inevitably (or so he had been thinking) run off to chat with whoever, or else sticking behind _her_ and following _her_ lead so that he wouldn't have to bother. He had not been expecting the exact opposite, and now greatly wondered if she spent all her time in the library to guard him or because she actually was just that socially distant—phoenixes and mountaintops and all that. He refrained from applying the same conclusions to himself, or from wondering if he had the same social presence as a frosty peak of granite.

He led them around towards the back of the pavilion, feeling distinctly like he was casing a place for danger, which he did feel a tiny bit as he recognized more than one Ministry of Magic official in the crowd. He wished he could shove Freya between them and use her as she was using him as a human shield, even though he had no real reason to fear beyond old anxieties and he was perfectly capable of defending himself.

Around the back of the yard, there was more decorative lawn work, and he quickly identified a picnic table half concealed behind a hedge, darting for it with forced casualness.

"Ahh, I see your game," said Freya, scooting onto the bench beside him. He had positioned himself at the far end of the bench, on the side of the table that he could face the back opening of the tent-looking sheets, but just as importantly, the table was full of food. Or, had been full of food. Apparently his guess that the party would be later in the evening may have been incorrect, because the platters of pumpkin muffins, little cakes, and finger foods looked to have been picked through already. Freya did not seem to mind this, however, grabbing up what looked like a miniature candied apple on a stick. "Perfect, you're a master at this. Skulk around in the shadows, look shady as all hell, and go straight for the food."

"Shut up. And stop touching me," he said with distracted disgust, twitching his elbow to ward off her too-close seating position, but his eyes remained on the people milling about. He heard the recognizable sound of Slughorn's booming laugh from inside the tent, joined by several others, and sighed. Well, perhaps this would work out. If the party had already been going on for a while, he ought to be able to catch Slughorn once people started leaving, hopefully sometime before it was too far into the night, and maybe he could even make it back to the castle in time for some light reading before bed. In the meantime, however, that left him with nothing to do.

He whipped his head to the right, jumping at the chance to finally get his admonishing out. "I cannot _believe_ —" But though his mouth remained open, it went silent. Freya, looking like she was about to shove an entire pumpkin creampuff into her own mouth, widened her eyes under his stare till they resembled the golden plates of the Great Hall. "That has eggs in it."

Looking to be as filled with deepest guilt as the pastry was undoubtedly filled with various animal products, she slowly took a giant bite, covering her mouth afterward to speak thickly behind her fingers, "Please don't judge me, I'm nervous."

"Absolute monster."

"It's not a" —she swallowed— "a strict rule, okay! I just don't _like_ to do it. It's personal preference."

"Do as you wish... cannibal."

"Oh, go stuff yourself," she said with a light smack on his arm. "Like you're one to judge when you're always asking me to pass you the roast quail at dinner—and you never even eat it!"

"Speaking of," he leaned forward, eyeing a pot of beef stew down the table, "would you mind?"

She scoffed, stuffing the whole tiny candied apple into her mouth now. "'et it yerself."

"That's not very _polite_ ," he said with delicate emphasis.

"We're outside—doesn't count. You can get up and walk around."

"That makes... no sense. Just pass it, I have to sit here and wait for—wh—" He yanked his right hand up from the bench as Freya scooted over far too close. "Excuse—" She inched in further till she leaned against his arm, reaching over him to grab a cookie from a tin and fixing him with a devilish grin as her face passed by close to his.

He hopped off the end of the bench, standing up at once. "Fine, _fine_. I'll get it myself." But he didn't go for any of the food, instead casting around for any nearby wine as he resolved to never sit on a bench near the irritating woman again—chairs only. Spotting a dedicated serving table with as many drinks as he could imagine by the nearest entrance, he sighed in relief. "Would you—"

She looked up at him, raising her brows at his cut off question and sudden silence. "Hm?"

"Nothing," he muttered darkly, already turning and stalking off to get an entire goblet of wine. She could get her own damn drink; it had just been habitual politeness that had overcome him in his distracted state, the infectious lively air of the party all around just barely but not quite reaching his own mood.

However, when he had finished waiting behind a group of what looked like several old Quidditch players, each with a differently broken nose and a different preference for alcoholic beverage, he found that he would not have to worry about seating arrangements with Freya anymore that night, as she was walking away from the picnic table at the side of Albus Dumbledore, chatting merrily. He was supremely glad he had not bothered to get her anything to drink. He stood abandoned on the spot by the liquor table, sipping his wine, when it was suddenly sopped down his chin as he was grabbed from behind around the shoulders.

"Severus, m'boy! You made it!"

What had been that one rule of wizarding self-defense again—never leave your back exposed? He had stood himself perfectly in front of one of the slits in the tent sheets, and was now being dragged by Slughorn through this over the threshold into the interior of the pavilion, sputtering and shaking his wet hand off while his other desperately held his sticky wine glass upright.

"Oh dear, oh dear, look at this—and all over that sharp tie of yours," Slughorn chuckled, pulling out his wand and cleaning his former student up with a quick, thankfully inconspicuous, wave of his wand. "No worries, happens to me all the time when I get into it."

"I—I am not _drunk_ ," he said indignantly, not even sure if he had swallowed one mouthful of wine before being accosted. He was being led over to the center of the blanketed room, towards a group of people, and he was very much wishing Slughorn's arms were not quite so meaty and domineering.

"Well, why aren't you! Have another," he tapped his wand and re-filled the glass with a dark reddish-brown liquid that did not look to be wine, but something much stronger. "Come, come, now, I believe everyone is almost all here..."

The crowd indeed seemed to be growing larger even as Slughorn released him and cleared his way through to the very middle of the room. Severus took the opportunity to melt towards the back of the crowd, sniffing at his glass and then setting it down on an empty table when the fumes, smelling of nothing but straight alcohol, burned his nose so bad his eyes watered.

"Albus Dumbledore! My dear man!"

He looked up passed the shoulders of people to see Slughorn going over to hug the tall headmaster, rolling his eyes at the display and Slughorn's overly loud voice, obviously just announcing his connections even though he had been in the man's employ until recently, so it really wasn't that impressive.

"And look at this—Why, I've got a basket of fruit with your name on it, my dear."

Even with bright red hair as she had, he couldn't see Freya through the crowd, shorter than the wizards standing between them as she was, and he childishly made plans to mock her height when next he saw her.

Slughorn bustled around, shaking hands and speaking far too loud for casual conversation in the enclosed space, and Severus was just starting to wonder if he should make his way back out of the tent when, turning to his left, he nearly jumped out of his boots.

Freya made no attempt to cover her mouth as she snickered at him, standing just a foot behind him somehow though he was sure she had just been across the room and he hadn't heard her approach. There was plenty of noise in the room, but still, the woman needed a bell or something. He sighed, aggrieved, when his attempt to turn back to the center of the room fully sent his heart into shock, twitching the opposite direction now as he caught sight of Dumbledore standing on his other side, grinning coolly at him.

Great. Wonderful. He was having such a good time at this party, surrounded on both sides by Albus Dumbledore and his pet, and Slughorn looking like he might have just gathered everyone in to stand like wax figures in his museum as opposed to any kind of actual reason.

As if just to further incense him, Freya leaned in on his left and seemed, bizarrely, to be sniffing him. "You smell like wine," she whispered, "did you fall in the punch bowl? I was wondering where you went."

This was just icing to complete the cake, and finally he gave in to the chaos of everything around him and ceased to care, staring dully straight ahead as he waited for things to carry on without him. Thankfully Slughorn was not in fact just pulling a cruel joke on them all, and the man walked away from the witch he had been talking to, still with a light chuckle in his voice as he called to the open room: "Yes, yes, I think that ought to do for now! Listen here!"

The great bald man wiped a hand over his brow, apparently sweating from how much he had imbibed despite the chilly air that crept in from the dark outside, but looking quite luxuriously pleased with himself, as always when he was hosting an event where he could rub elbows. "Now, now. Dear friends, and those whom I think of as family," he began, speaking with all the tones of someone about to ordain a wedding, "we are gathered here today—oho! But not for that." He chortled merrily at his own joke, accompanied by people who must truly be intoxicated to the point of laughing along despite the lame content. "No, no, today I have gathered you, as I wrote in my letter—to celebrate!" He paused to let a few people hoot merrily. "Ah, but to celebrate what you might ask? Hmm?" He placed his hands behind his back, beginning to make a slow pacing circle around the clear area he had to address the crowd. "Not just Halloween—no—though, then again, of course that too!"

Severus was losing focus on this ridiculous routine, and his attention slipped down to his left, where Freya answered his look with an amused roll of her eyes. She briefly turned her back to the orator to hide while she made a gesture like she would be downing her drink if she had one in hand. The corner of his mouth twitched as he watched her.

"To celebrate... the ending of a long and dreadful time in all our lives."

His head slowly turned back up.

Slughorn's face was no longer grinning jovially, and his bushy mustache seemed to be drooping off his face as he frowned, brows furrowed. The room went quiet, though a few murmured their acknowledgement. He continued on.

"Ah, but why now, so late, you might be wondering?" A puff of laughter seemed to escape him then, but it was without joy. "All of you, you know me, I would never skimp at a reason to be merry—ah, but I could not at that time, I simply could not. The answer is plain my friends—I was overcome by grief. What a vast and terrible thing it is, to lose such vibrant young lives in the midst of what should have been no less than the greatest relief to our hearts that were hardened during so many years of turmoil."

The pavilion suddenly sounded dampened by more than just sheets of fabric as his own pulse thudded behind his ears, and he oddly remembered the day he had been dragged into the Ministry to stand trial, with two dementors at his side; only, surely the chill against his back was from the open entryways, not the two people standing like guards on either side of him. He still felt just as locked in place, completely trapped and without breath, as he had then.

"Losing Lily and James Potter—ah, my apologies," Slughorn cleared his throat, as his voice had broken. "Sent them wedding gifts when I heard the news, you know... but they couldn't have a—a proper celebration, of course, such dark times as they were... But I did attend the funeral..." The man looked to be lost in thought for a moment, before he gave a great shuddering breath and went on, "But it wouldn't do—no, it absolutely wouldn't—to not celebrate what they gave their lives for, so that we may live in peace. In their honor, and the many fallen with them, I invite you all to a toast!" His voice carried through the room with booming sentiment, and the crowd answered the ending to his speech with hearty agreement as everyone found a drink.

Severus greatly wished he had not abandoned the drink he had been given, feeling like he could down the whole noxious glass in one go.

He could not stay in the room any longer, stumbling back on wobbly legs as he ducked behind Freya and pushed his way through the crowd out into the welcoming cold night air and sudden too-loud chorus of insects. All of their chirping was drowned out by the sound of many people cheering in unison behind him, sounding like they were in a different world beneath the roof. Gulping in the soothing chilly air, trying to refill lungs that felt like they would never work properly again, he found this did nothing to stop his shaking. He felt cold inside and out now, and the smoke from the pavilion, compiled by the fireplace and various pipes of many wizards, lingered on his clothes, making him feel like he was perhaps being burned alive so hot that his senses could not comprehend, only feeling numb and frozen. He vaguely realized he was holding on to the rough wooden edge of a picnic table so tightly that he could feel tiny splinters, and his mind focused on the sensation rather than anything else.

"S... Severus...?"

His teeth clicked together so tightly he was surprised he hadn't bit his cheek open. "Stay... the hell... away from me."

"Severus!"

He wheeled around at this very different voice, looking into not Freya's face, though she was standing there, too, looking stricken, but Slughorn's.

"Now, now, now! Is that any way to speak to a lady checking in on you?"

His face twitched as his gaping mouth tried to make contact with his brain to deal with this situation, but it was failing miserably. His eyes slid to Freya's, pinning every ounce of blame for this night onto her, with her idiotic mindless expression. She looked in panic back at Slughorn, seemingly spurred into feeble action.

"Err—Perhaps we should just leave him be—"

"No, no, you were quite right with what you said, I see now," Slughorn waved away her attempts, barely looking at her as he kept his eyes resolutely determined on his former pupil. "I'll talk to him myself."

The disruption of his breathing suddenly vanished, and he felt a cold stillness wash over him. His eyes moved between the two of them, Freya looking even more worried than before at his reaction, and he let go of the table he was clinging to, standing up perfectly straight with his mind clear and sharp. "Do share," he said with icy calm, "what exactly it was that she said?"

"My boy, she said that you've been out of sorts for months, and I can understand why completely," he nodded sagely, his copious neck bulging out over his cravat. "Lily's death would undoubtedly have-"

"Don't—" His delicate composure cracked at once.

"—affected you deeply, being a close friend—oh, I'm sure even after your teenaged falling out, don't think I've forgotten—but surely you two made-up after graduating, close as you were."

"I—" He felt wobbly again, like he might actually faint, eyes cast down to the ground, scoping out a good place for his face to land and hopefully just knock him out of his misery.

"But, goodness, Severus! To speak to a friend like that, and a lady so kind as Freya here." Slughorn gestured to his side, but the woman was feet away already, looking like she might be trying to sink into the night itself despite her obvious brightly colored appearance. The man noticed her absence and looked around at her retreating stance, eyeing the two of them back and forth. "My word," he said, and he actually chuckled, slightly drunkenly, "history repeating, is it?"

Severus found his mind enough to look up in absolute disgust, but Slughorn went on.

"Why, I saw you two in the back of the room there, and I must say... that sight alone nearly choked me up from my speech—my goodness! I thought I was seeing a ghost—or perhaps two! Well, her back was turned, but still, from behind, that hair..."

His eyes were like flint daggers as he slowly leveled his gaze back to the withdrawing woman, and by the look on her face, she would have perhaps liked to borrow one to chop off all her hair and cut and run from this accused relation to a dead friend. She stared back at him, horrified.

"I'm... leaving," he whispered quietly, his voice unnaturally brittle.

"But—oh, my—Severus!" Slughorn seemed shocked at being completely ignored.

But he had already turned on his heel and was marching directly for the woods, not even caring where he was going, just knowing that he was through.

After barely a few yards, he had pulled his wand out to silence the sound his feet made crunching through the leaves, finding it altogether extremely loud and obnoxious and making him feel like a troll lumbering through the trees. Even with the only sound being insects and the rustling of his layered fabrics, the party sounds dying out far behind him, he still felt ungraceful. His body had stopped shaking, but his limbs still felt weakened, like he had run too far the previous day and was now in a state of dormant recovery. If only his mind mended in the same way as muscles.

Not that he cared much to mend it. He was fine to stumble around in the dark, feeling as hollow and barren as the leafless trees around him.

He never should have been so foolish as to let himself be led here. Slughorn didn't have answers for him, and if he did, he should have known no information would be worth it given that the man would inevitably bring her up. She had been one of his favorite students after all. It was that phoenix woman—she had tricked him with smiles and bribes, probably knowing the whole time what Slughorn's intentions were. Hell, she probably set this whole thing up.

He clicked his teeth together, not from the cold, though it was encroaching in on him, eating through his clothes, but out of a feeling of possessed anger.

They were nothing alike. Nothing. Not in hair color, or personality, or strength of character.

And especially not in life because one of them was dead while the other got to merrily live her immortal life, over and over, while good brave young people remained dead and gone.

" _There's people dying all over the world!"_

They certainly were, and crying would never bring them back.

He had blamed Dumbledore for not helping enough, for letting her die even under his immeasurable influence and power, but he had never gotten a chance to extend his grudge to the phoenix. He had thought the creature of a lesser mind, only an extension of Dumbledore's power, but now he knew she had her own mind capable of being blamed for carelessness, didn't she?

He bit down hard on his tongue, holding it between his teeth to concentrate on the single sharp spot of sensation in his numb body.

It felt so freeing to blame their imbecilic smiling faces than have to scrap the barrel for any trace of guilt he had not already thrown at himself. There was nothing left for him to turn to but malice. He told himself this, but even as he tried to hold onto that hatred, it was slipping from his fingers as much as the heat from his body. It was if he didn't have enough substance to even hold onto anything, though he suddenly found that he desperately needed something to hold on to, because he was starting to shake again, and not from the cold.

He held his chest taut, taking breaths only in quick little doses as his eyes stared unfocused at his ghostly breath before his face, and willing the feeling behind his eyes to cease. He just needed someone to blame, someone to cast his eyes on with deepest loathing, someone that wasn't his pathetic self.

But as he heard the sound of gently crunched leaves behind him, he found actually that he would rather be completely alone, forever if possible. He didn't even have it in him to be mad, because he had done this himself, too.

"Go... away."

The sound of more leaves crinkled, gathering closer to him, and he turned, staring with dull shock.

"Is this better?"

His arms hung limply at his sides, no strength to even hide how defeated he felt. "You look... hideous."

"Ah, well," she ran her fingers through her now jet-black hair, holding it out for inspection with a grimace, "you look pretty bad yourself."

"Not nearly as bad as you."

She looked back at him, bristling as if actually offended underneath her show of concern for his well-being. "Yes, well—"

"It doesn't suit you at all."

She blinked slowly, closing her mouth and reopening it to try again, but he continued.

"You look like a disowned member of the Black family tree, or like some back-alley witch trying to hide her identity from client to—"

"Alright, Severus, alright! I'll change it back!" She tapped her wand to her head, and achieved a new look of exploding flames that lingered in a fiery ball over the top of her head. She stood in stunned silence, wand held in place, blinking. "This is fine."

"That suits you better," he offered dimly.

"It won't suit the forest when I burn the whole place down," she said, pocketing her wand and smoothing her free hand from her crown to the tips of her hair, leaving behind her usual color, now with less real fire.

"That might not be so bad," he said listlessly, turning back to face the woods around him, as if seeing them for the first time and contemplating their usefulness at relieving his pent-up emotions. He had, apparently, walked himself into a tiny clearing, ringed and scattered with waist-high bushes.

He didn't know whether Freya just didn't happen to care about this particular forest, or she was holding in admonishing him for wishing for such violence, but she remained quiet behind him, letting his words go without comment. He half wished she would launch into some idiotic rambling that he could scathingly attack her for, but he felt even his waking Sleeping Draught wouldn't help in this case. This wasn't a fire to be put out or glass to keep from breaking—he already felt plenty put out and broken. It was a few minutes before she spoke.

"I'm sorry..."

"Oh?" He rounded on her immediately, feeling the tiny flare of rage he was searching for. "Are you? And what good is an apology?"

She stared at him in horrified surprised, seemingly unsure what she had said wrong. "I—… For telling Slughorn, I mean..."

His little spark of anger died in an instant and he slowly turned away again, not even willing to acknowledge his mistake in thinking she was offering condolences.

There was a clearing of the throat and attempts to speak behind him and he inwardly sighed in preparation for whatever was coming.

"I know you don't... want to talk to me about this, Severus. I really only came to get you," she explained with wooden cadence, "but I truly do think you should at least talk to Slughorn—"

"No."

She paused, but she hadn't given up yet. "If anyone is going to understand, it seems like—"

"Understand? Him?" Her face was weary when he turned back, perhaps not even believing there was a point to her attempts given his current expression of blind apathy. "He doesn't understand anything." There was an implied note that nobody else would either, but he wasn't feeling quite so outwardly dramatic to share his every thought. It was hard enough focusing on any words.

Silence crept back to the clearing. When next she spoke, it was a barely audible whisper, as if she hated having to say the words. "He... said you didn't attend the funeral."

The weight of his wand in his pocket called to his mind, and with an eerily blank stillness, he imaged drawing it on her for daring to speak this into existence. His eyes felt heavy again, and he strained them against the feeling. When he looked at her, he was almost, insanely, gleeful. "Is that... a joke?"

She winced back at him in a familiar way, looking like she might cry as she sucked in her lower lip. It was painful to watch, because it was his own feeling in his chest that could not be let out, and he dully remembered what she was and what powers she had. But just her crying wouldn't force anything on him, and if she so dared do anything else—he absolutely would pull his wand.

"Severus, it's... grieving is supposed to be—"

"Shut up."

She looked like she might listen, but he knew her better than that by now, and this was not the library where she would comply with silence. Her face screwed up, looking to be concocting some harebrained scheme to fire back with. "I could take—… You should at the very least visit her grave..."

And he did laugh at that, because it was so preposterously insane. Slughorn at least had the excuse of ignorance, but she knew better than that. She knew the whole story. The sharp bark of sound left his lungs more like a choked sob.

"You... You really think so, do you? That's what you think?" He stepped towards her for the first time, as if remembering he had legs, but they were stiff and he felt like a mannequin. As he grew nearer, his voice quieted to barely a whisper. "You think... I... could just walk up to her grave? Lay some flowers? Have a cry?" His face fell as he stared down into the shimmering wet gold eyes. He felt like he was crying without his body actually performing the action itself as he stared, transfixed, hearing her breath hitch and feeling the twinge in his own chest. It felt like his ribcage might be caving in on itself. His voice hardly sounded like his own anymore, the air merely being squeezed from his lungs through his lips.

"I killed her..."

"No—you didn't—"

"Yes, I did..."

"You didn't! It was just—it was him—and you made a mistake!"

"Yes," he said, and his voice found its strength again as he swallowed, his eyes going blank once more. "I did. I made a mistake... and got her killed. And there's nothing you, or anyone, can do about that."

When he pushed passed her to leave, he wasn't sure which of them was more unstable from the small impact, barely catching his feet as he stumbled forward back the way he had come.

There were no more thoughts left to form in his mind, and he wandered in the direction of the party, thinking he could hear the noise in the distance to orient himself and pick his way back to the village and beyond, unnoticed. Apparently, however, someone had put a tracking charm on him when he wasn't looking, because he was attracting all sorts of unwanted individuals. This newest intruder was much less graceful in the crashing leaves, blundering his way towards him so that he thought he might turn back and see an actual walrus gaining on him. No walrus could pull off a velvet waistcoat quite like Slughorn though.

"No," he said simply, before the older man could catch his breath and get a word in.

"Now see—"

"I'm going."

"—here, Severus! Stop this at once, come now!"

He considered simply Apparating as close as he could to the grounds, but he could easily just be followed, and leading whatever this hopefully brief conversation was going to be out from the dark of the forest where it belonged didn't seem like a good option. He continued marching on.

"Oh, no you don't!" Slughorn said, catching up to his side with difficulty. "Did you think I was going to give up that easily? Why, m'boy, I don't want to, but I will jinx you if I must."

His brow furrowed at being so talked down to—as if he was a child and wouldn't draw his own wand to defend himself—or attack. He had perhaps done too thorough a job making himself seem innocent as he worked over the man for years for information. With his lip still curled in disgust, he finally came to a stop and spoke. "What? What could you possibly have to say?"

A thick finger was wagged at him as Slughorn drew up in front of him. "Oho, doubting your old professor, are you? I've only been out of the job for a few scant months!"

His face drew taut with irritation. He didn't have time to fool around with this, he just wanted to go back, and besides, he almost relished the opportunity to reveal what he truly thought of the man. He would savor the look on his face. "It's a wonder you were ever a professor in the first place. You're a bumbling old idiot who can't even tell when he's being-"

"Played?" Slughorn set his knuckles on his hips, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "My boy, really, do you think me that daft? Dumbledore told me the minute after you first approached me."

He stared, but he had already figured as much, given that he had never revealed information on the headmaster himself.

"And I waved him off, because I know you better than that—of my own House, you were. A good student."

He felt the hollow feeling in his chest expand just slightly. "You are a fool if you think that."

"Now—"

"You don't know anything. Only the bare minimum from Dumbledore, which is nothing at all. So stop talking."

He thought this would be the end of it, but the man spoke on just as he was turning to leave again.

"It's you who knows very little, I'm afraid. Very little indeed... Not that it matters now, and I can't be revealing things..."

He thought for a moment he was being played, in that way Slughorn sometimes did to incite questions from people so that he could answer and feel important, but the man was looking at the ground lost in his own thoughts, not waiting expectantly for a question into this. He looked up as he caught Severus staring at him, and continued in his gruff voice.

"You can't understand what I've done, and I'm sure I don't know all you have either—don't want to know! But trust me when I say I do know the look of a guilty conscious when I see it. I do." He hung his bald head again, looking suddenly weepy as he did during his speech, but up close it was worse to see. "I am not quite so blind yet, old as I am... I should be at home, enjoying my retirement, for goodness sake..." More leaves were crunched underfoot as he suddenly stepped up to him, smacking a big hand on Severus's skinny arm and giving it a little shake that made him wobble in his stunned silence. "But you—m'boy, you are so young—ah, but you're not a boy anymore, are you? You're a man, and you carry the weight of the actions of one. Better than I could, even... so young though, truly..." His watery little eyes wandered away before snapping back to Severus's black ones with urgency, tightening his grip on his arm. "You shouldn't be holding it in as you are, Severus. You must be getting on with your life, you need to grieve, and then go live—for her, for Lily—"

He shook the hand off his arm immediately, stepping back as if the taboo name caused him physical pain, but Slughorn would not let him run off so easily.

"Lily would not have wanted this for—"

" _How dare you say what she would have wanted!_ " He wasn't running away now, his hands clenched into fists so tight he would have to pry them apart if he went for his wand. "You don't know! You can't know anything, because she's dead!"

Slughorn fixed him with a sad miserable expression. "Oh, I can know. Because she was a good woman, Lily. And a good friend to you. Good people with hearts like hers do not carry grudges beyond the grave."

"That's not up for you to decide, now is it—"

"Severus!" And suddenly his voice had boomed through the forest, his next words carrying the strength of deep lungs though not quite as loud as his shout. "She did not die so young for you to be the one trapped forever like a ghost in your youth—behaving so childishly! You are a man, now, act like one!"

But he felt diminished in that moment, not like a man at all as he was compressed under the weight of his old professor's impactful words and hard stare. Slughorn's momentary harshness abated, and he delicately approached once more, placing both hands on his former student's shoulders as he was allowed. "Do you remember what I taught you...? Must have been sixth year... We do not make antidotes to heal, m'boy, that is a different branch of magic that revitalizes blood loss and closes wounds. We make them to stop the damage that's being done currently, cleanse the poison from the veins. Face it, Severus. Be brave like she was. Face that guilt first and foremost, let yourself feel that pain—and then you can heal."

Hadn't something like this been said to him before in a much less gentle way? Dumbledore could never hope to achieve the meaningfulness of that moment, however, as his mind brought up thoughts of fathers who loved their children unconditionally, even when they were hopelessly wrong creatures. He almost choked on the unbidden thoughts, scattering them away with fast blinks of his eyes, but he must have been failing miserably to control the rest of his face, because Slughorn patted his arms knowingly. He was just widening his arms to pull him in when Severus backed away with a start, and the man's arms fell to his plump sides. Slughorn gave a quick curt nod, but he seemed to understand. He had said his piece, and there was nothing else he could do here, turning with one last hopeful pained smile cast over his shoulder as he made his way back towards the park.

Whether from the chill bite of the air or his own feeling of cracked ice, he wasn't sure, but his legs shook as he went on through the trees, trying to force his brain to concentrate on how to get him back to the castle so he could throw himself into his bedchamber and lock the world away behind thick stone walls. His mind was asunder though, and he could only think of the brief fleeting warmth of hands gripping his shoulders, wishing he could have absorbed an ounce of that strength he had felt. He was not nearly so strong, never truly had been, and never would be. He felt like he had been softened into a damp clay. There was no need to find relief in biting his tongue anymore, as his eyes were stinging quite enough to occupy him as he desperately tried not to break down completely. He couldn't, he just couldn't. Whatever Slughorn had said to him, to open that floodgate into the swiftly flowing undercurrent of his deepest regret would be devastating. He could only condemn himself to the shallow uneven breathing and tight constrictions of the chest as he grabbed from tree to tree to carry him on. The sounds of the bustling village were unrelenting, however, and as he got near enough to see through the trees where he needed to go to get back on the footpath to the castle, he realized it was too crowded, and he was trapped in the woods.

He turned back, wandering deeper in, when, eventually, a dim light caught his eye. Of course, he knew he was being watched the whole time, but it didn't make him want to address it, and he walked straight passed the large red feather floating down among the leaves and making them look dull in comparison as it glowed with a brightness that didn't require the light of day. Another one popped in front of his path almost at once, sticking straight up from the ground, and he was forced to look more closely, because he had seen this image before. A solitary feather, shining in the dark of a forest at night, that would transport him to where it was bewitched to travel if he would just reach down and take it. Was he being offered mercy—a fast track to the castle? He bent down low, feeling like he might topple over if he did not take his time with this task. His fingertips were just being illuminated by the warm glow when he suddenly yanked his whole arm back as if burned, feeling like he was snapping out of a deep possession that would have led him to an early grave. His heart thudded in his chest, remembering Freya's last words moments before. He suspected it wasn't his own grave that this feather would have taken him.

The feather seemed to understand his hesitance, and while it was abandoned feet away by his hastily backtracking steps, its third replica snapped in a spark of flame at his feet once more. He looked up wildly into the trees.

"Stop it! I'm not going!"

He hated the sound of his own voice, weak and petulant, and wished he had chosen better words even in his sudden blind panic so that he didn't sound like such a child as Slughorn had accused him. A fourth feather popped into place against a tree beside his head, and he turned to it with clenched teeth. The tip had been cut off, bearing no trace of blood from the body it was taken, and he wondered if the phoenix was actually sitting somewhere snipping her own feathers off even as he ignored her. She could ruin her whole beautiful plumage for all he cared.

"Why would you—even think—I—" He was still shaken, and the thought that he had been so close to setting foot on that gravesite was unmanageable.

Another feather popped dangerously under his chin, and he looked down at it tucked into the front of his robes, swatting it off in fear and stumbling backward. He whipped his wand out in a blind rage, almost forgetting to cast something that would normally be so harmless, but the jet of water from his wand tip was so sharp it looked to have not only disintegrated the feather into a sad brown, but cut it in half.

" _Enough!_ " He pivoted around, wand out, madly looking for her, because he really was furious now. The strong emotion was almost too much for his state, but he would find relief in getting at least a hit in on her. But she was nowhere to be found. He tried to speak again, attempting to perhaps lure her out from the trees that his eyes were casting about searchingly through, but he sounded desperate even in his own ears.

"Do you really think... that I... would ever set foot there?"

He strafed to his left, and he imagined the sleepy little cottage town in his mind, similar, but far from Hogsmeade.

"Me? When you know what I did?"

He whipped his head around to look behind him, knowing her tactics, but there was nothing aside from the soft sound of his own hair brushing against his cheeks, not even a feather.

He steadied himself, straightening up and lowering his wand. This was too frustrating, and the image of a perfectly lovely little cottage with its upper corner blown to bits was blinking behind his eyes even as he tried to clear them.

"You think I could ever show my face—..." His voice gave out, his breath feeling like it was being sucked into the cold night.

" _I'm the one that put her in that grave, and you expect me dare set foot there?_ "

The image of an entirely different town came to mind, with a grinning red-haired little girl and childish secret meetings that felt so important back then and summer air that was nowhere to be found in this cold, damp forest.

His face crumpled instantly, but he bit back his tears. He was not allowed to cry over something that he had caused. He had ignored every warning, thrown her every word of advice into the dirt, and she had gotten tossed down in with it as he failed to listen.

"I... I..." He could barely keep from sobbing, swallowing thickly to no avail against the all-encompassing anguish. "I-I'm sorry..."

But what good was an apology? What good were tears? His own cynical tenets flashed through his mind back at him. None of it would accomplish anything to undo what had been done. It was him that was no good.

And then he felt it, dripping into his chest like he had been stabbed in the heart and the blood was now spreading with a liquid flow out from one point, and he gasped, gripping the front of his shirt, clutching his tie. There was nothing physical he could grab to make it stop, however, as the phoenix song was only inside him. He could feel his squirming heart struggle beneath the skin, shaking against his fist, and he fell to his knees like a dead weight.

"Please don't—I can't—" But the tears were already pooling in his eyes, and his voice was so soft he wasn't sure even Freya could hear him now as he doubled over, his vision blurring.

It was no use, he knew. He had heard it before, and felt it then, too, even in his addled state at the time. It was his own grief brought to song, a low painful music, somehow harsh and scathing but warm at the same time. It wasn't a feeling of being done to him, but a choir singing for him—displaying his grief as he could not—vivid, horrible, tangible in every part of him.

His body shook as he watched the tears fall onto the leaves, an indistinguishable mess to his blind eyes as his hair fell around his face, blocking out any chance of letting in what little light existed in the trees. He could no longer speak, but he was still begging for it to stop in his mind, even as he broke down from holding his chest back as it became too painful to try and contain his waves of sobs.

He did not know how long he stayed hunched there on the ground, as if cradling the warm lament in his arms while it shielded him from the world outside his thoughts and the cold air. By the time he began shakily collecting himself, he felt like an odd stiff but still-warm corpse, freshly dead.

Wiping his entire face off with the sleeve of his robe, he stared dully at the ground in front of him. His wand had fallen from his hands somewhere at his side, but he wasn't sure he could yet turn his neck to look for it. Patting blindly at the leaves, he managed to find it and return it to his pocket without moving his deadened gaze an inch.

Then something brightly flashed before his stare, and he would have scrambled away if he had any strength, but all he could muster was a choked, " _No._ " But the feather sticking out of the ground vanished in a puff of flame, and he frowned. It returned again, this time the spark that brought it jumping to life.

He watched with distant fascination as a tiny flame stretched and drew itself into a little flickering castle, attached to the very end of the feather like a candle, and then it went out, leaving only the soft glow.

He blinked. So he was being shown mercy, after all. He wondered if any of the feathers had ever led anywhere but there, remembering her words to him from weeks ago about how she would not leave him out in the cold because it was just too sad. He found he didn't have the mind to deal with working out whatever it was that Freya Fawkes was thinking, or how sad he must look. He watched his shaking hand reach out, as if not even his own, barely conscious of the fact that he should probably stand up first and make himself presentable so he wasn't transporting to the Hogwarts grounds looking a disheveled mess. This need not have been a worry though, it seemed, as when his hand made contact and he was suddenly engulfed in too-hot rushing air that blasted all trace of chill from his clothes, he opened his eyes to see not the grounds, but the side of his bed in the dungeons. Looking around, there was a fire already lit in the fireplace opposite the foot of his bed, burning with slightly more red flames and noticeably more sparks. He picked himself up off the floor with extreme effort, noticing, when he looked down, that the feather he had been holding was gone.

He stayed with the covers pulled up to his ears all of Sunday, only tiredly padding down to his office to brew up something for Monday morning to somewhat revitalize him so that he could sleep in as much as he wanted, straight through breakfast, but hopefully not look completely dead for classes.

All other meals in the Great Hall were skipped after that as well, and he spent three days stealing down to Hogsmeade at odd hours to grab a bite to eat from a seedy pub, feeling like he was reliving his summer—and especially August—all over again. Reckless, raw, and dazed.

It was most of the way through the week when he finally accepted that his avoidance was doing him more harm than good, no longer relieving him from the stress of having to face her, but making him more stressed out from the fear of when it would happen. It didn't have to happen in front of anyone else though. He crept up to the research library, feeling similarly as he had the first time he had stood at this door, staring at the 'STAFF ONLY' sign and steeling himself.

He boldly made his way straight for the usual table, taking a sharp turn passed a long row of bookshelves and coming into the oval clearing with casual importance. Freya looked up as he placed his hand on his regular chair, second from the booth to keep the space between them distanced.

It was her expression that he had most been dreading. He didn't want to see it, whatever mix of pity, concern, or caring it was, but something else entirely different caught his attention. His eyes slipped to just above hers, towards her brow, and she seemed able to tell where he was looking, snapping shut her surprised mouth and making a face as she patted the newest addition of a fringe to her hairstyle. "Is it weird?"

He stared in silence, momentarily unsure if he was about to be blamed, even jokingly, for this, or if he even was to blame.

She sighed comically, pushing her fingers through her hair as she often did, only now it scattered shorter strands into an elegant messiness. "Just say 'no' and sit down, will you? I'm not looking for fashion advice."

The muscles around his face twitched and relaxed, and he finally pulled his chair out- but there was something waiting for him on the table. Sitting slowly, he inspected the thin brown wrapping paper, folded in a long flat rectangle and tied with red twine. "What's this?"

She barely looked up from her paper, merely raising her brows indifferently. "Hm... I wonder..."

He eyed her, then the parcel. Clearing his throat, he said with tentative sarcasm, "Have you... taken up extra work as a post owl?"

She tapped down her quill, looking up at him with a tight smile that, despite looking specifically peeved, loosened his chest. "Why don't you just open it?"

The corners of his lips curled as he glanced at her. In one motion, he took out his wand and vanished the wrapping fully without even touching it.

"Severus! You didn't even open it, that doesn't count! Oh, I bet you're real fun on Christmas, aren't you?"

But he was staring down at the red feather laying with innocent stillness on the polished wood, barely listening. There was no reason for his heart to panic though, as his eyes traced down to its point—this one was carved into the elegant intricate tip of a quill.

"It's... not a tail feather," he said quietly.

She was watching him fully now, her work forgotten. She seemed hesitant herself to hazard her next remark, but her voice slipped into the familiar tone at the end. "Well... I don't remember ever saying it would be, just that I agreed to give you _a_ feather. Guess that's what you get for gambling."

When he glanced at her with deadpan half-lidded disbelief, she smiled with full brightness, showing teeth like the obnoxious imp she was. The last of his misgivings about whatever expression he had been expecting from her died out, and his own face cracked into a grin and he laughed his quiet laugh.

It was pushed out from his lungs and sucked back in just as quickly, and he immediately went still, staring down at the table blankly again. He could just see her own frozen posture from the corner of his vision, and he tried to unthaw the reaction his body had just had from daring to flex this emotion too soon after such a raw re-opening of wounds. His mind raced, trying to sort out if he was still able to laugh, or if this would shatter the calm stillness that had overtaken him. He settled for coughing dryly into his hand and busying himself with getting out his own papers and things, leaving his old quill where it was stuffed into the bottom. When he straightened, the sound of a thick glass object hit the table to his left.

"I got you ink as well," she said offhandedly. "I know you normally grade in black, but, well, it's a red feather, so..."

He gently pushed the little inkwell back towards her. "I'll still to black, thanks."

Not looking put-out, she scooped it back up into her bag. "More for me, then."

"It does look... odd, however," he said as he held up his new quill, only hesitating a fraction before he touched it. The main colorful plume felt just slightly warm between his fingers, but the actual quill was room temperature when he pinched it, testing out the feel of waving it in tight little circles hovered above the parchment. Mostly, it was just gaudy and unmatching to his style.

"Yes, you do look like quite a prat, don't you?" To his surprise, Freya was looking at him with undisguised disgust.

He raised his brows. "Are you referring to the addition of the pen, or just your thoughts in general?"

"Both, in equal measure."

Curiously, he looked from her disgruntled face, to where she was staring at the quill in his hand. He waved it around, watching her eyes follow it. He held it over his black inkwell and watched her eye practically twitch. The corners of his mouth stretched into a devilish grin, and he dipped it in excessively deep, pulling it out dripping wet in a solid inch and half of jet black at the point. She bared her teeth in a grimace.

" _Very_ lovely gift," he said with much pleasure, "thank you _ever_ so much."

"Mm... mhm," she said tersely, nodding with her fingers pressed over now tightly shut lips and staring down at her paper like she couldn't bear to watch any longer. She just managed to peek up at him, and he was about to taunt her more, when her expression softened. Inspecting the image of him, she spoke with her hand still over her mouth so that her words were slightly mumbled. "It suits you."

His hand stopped just as he was about to place an inky finger print on the fine red feather. He glanced down at it, unsure of this conclusion. It still looked much too bright and excessive for his tastes, but then again, he would most likely only be using it in this library anyway...

"Your hair looks nice," he muttered back, and leaned forward over his work before he could catch the look of her reaction. A moment passed before he finally heard a reply from Freya, her voice sounding a bit higher than normal despite her biting remark, and he kept his head down, smirking behind his sheet of hair.

"I meant it suits you as a prat."

* * *

_— *** —_


	5. Playing With Fire

_—***—_

* * *

"My, between Slughorn's party and the excellent Halloween staff meeting we had yesterday, I was thinking of throwing a fun little shindig myself for Chirstmas!"

" _No!_ " " _No._ "

Flitwick blinked in surprise at this simultaneous negative reaction from his fellow professors.

Severus wondered if he would ever get to have a normal conversation with the man, who still seemed to be the only staff member at least attempting communication with him. Apart from, of course, Freya, who was currently pretending to cough after having exclaimed so loudly that the nearest students headed for breakfast had turned to look around the Entrance Hall for the source. The three teachers were tucked behind the marble staircase near the dungeon entrance, thankfully out of sight.

" _Ahem_ , um," Freya attempted to smile through the odd reaction from both of them, "you know, I would love to, but I—err—already have plans. What a shame. But I hope the party goes well!"

"And I will have to check my schedule before I consider it," Severus added quickly, though he had no schedule and his only thoughts were that parties should be forever canceled until further notice.

"Oh, well, certainly," Flitwick said, a bit put out. "Well then, I had better head in to breakfast before Pomona gets all the jam. Are you two...?"

"We're waiting for someone, just be a minute," Freya replied with a dismissive smile.

The pair of them were left to their sentry as Flitwick stepped away with a small wave, and then both settled in to eye the lessening crowd of students as they mingled by.

"I feel bad... I would have loved to go to a Flitwick party," Freya said.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have lied then."

"I didn't! I really do have plans."

"That was you telling the truth? You're awful at it."

"I just panicked," she said with a sigh. "What about you? You could still go on your own, or perhaps I could get back in time..." She looked up at him encouragingly and he answered her with an icy side-eye.

"Freya," he said with dangerous sweetness, "if you ever invite me to so much as a tea party, I will interpret it as an attempt on my life."

She nodded and raised a thumbs-up. "Duly noted. If I ever want to off you, I'll send you a fancy invite to a Gobstones party as a warning, so we can duel it out with proper class."

He let out a quiet scoff and furrowed his brow as his eyes went back towards the passersby. "You talk as if you would stand a chance in a duel."

Now she cast him a cool sideways glance. "Severus, the scariest thing I've seen you do with something in your hand is torture a muffin with a breadknife."

He bristled and turned towards her, but was momentarily distracted from coming up with a biting rebuttal by the confusing notion that something was wrong with his muffin slicing skills. "Perhaps you would be willing to test that theory out?"

"If the opportunity arises, perhaps I... _WELLS!_ "

This time he jumped along with the rest of the sleepy moseying entrance hall occupants at the sudden shout, though for him it was more due to the loud interruption of their particular conversation topic. She really needed to stop sneaking up on him and making any loud exclamations if his twitchy wand hand was ever going to calm down. They bickered around the topic of dueling enough that one day he really would repeat his first night at the school.

Of the startled people looking around with the distinct expression of remembering that their name was not 'Wells' and then moving along, the Slytherin quidditch team that had just pushed through the great oak front doors was not among them. They all looked to Wells, who was being beckoned to the very far side of the hall by an irate looking Freya, and loudly jeered him as he tried to walk as swiftly towards the two professors as he could with his head down.

"Oh, you've tracked mud..." She sighed in exasperation. "That's fine, I'll go have your teammates handle it; they seem to be in a lively mood. Your Head of House needs to have a word with you."

The remaining pair stood watching Freya as she left to go tell off the muddy team, who ceased taunting their teammate at once when they saw her coming. Wells turned back towards his professor with the look of having had the last laugh in that situation, then seemed to remember that he was the one being singled out for a talking to as his eyes met Severus's stony stare.

"Professor—we were just—I know you didn't schedule us for this morning, but the first match is coming up and—"

"I do not care," he said with slow measured indifference cutting across his student's hasty explanations, "what you do for practice." He paused for effect while the boy, mouth now clamped shut, seemed by the look of his widening eyes to be piecing together what this was about. He would have to wait before the true topic was jumped on, however. "But speaking of... I trust you are all prepared?"

Wells looked to have swallowed down his momentary alarm, relaxing at once into eager anticipation to talk about quidditch. "Yes sir, we're definitely going to crush Gryffindor, no sweat. Well—it will probably be raining, so, more likely we'll be freezing but-"

"Wonderful," Severus commented with only half of his attention on the future of the first quidditch match of the season. "So, you are all dedicated and focused on winning, are you?"

The boy blinked in confusion at the conflicting tone of this conversation, but nodded along.

"And you won't be doing anything that will perhaps... get you barred from playing in the game?"

His eyes went back to wide panic at once and he spluttered, "What? But, Professor, you can't- you want to win as bad as—"

"Yes," he once again stifled the much too quick for so early in the morning protests with his stern voice, "I would enjoy a win. But I cannot do much to help you if you are getting caught," he dropped his tone one level with each proceeding word until it was a dangerously low hiss, "in the middle of the night, halfway across the castle, by another teacher."

Wells reeled himself in at once, closing up like a shopkeeper that had just seen a group of Death Eaters walk by. He held his tongue in uncomfortable silence before realizing he was being pressured to speak his defensive piece first. "I... but... Professor Fawkes just sent me back to the dorm last night. She didn't even punish me."

"Indeed. She was polite enough to provide me with the opportunity to decide on a punishment for my own student." His black eyes glanced across the hall to where the woman was shooing the mostly cleaned up Slytherin team in for breakfast, though she didn't follow them and he wondered for a second where she was going. His focus needed to be on Wells for now though. Clearing his voice to a more casual indifference, he carefully laid out his next words. "But I would first like to hear what you think would be apt."

"Me?"

"Yes. You. What do you think your punishment should be?"

"I... I don't... err..."

Severus held in his compounding sigh as he waited to pass his own judgement. It had been irritating enough being confronted by Freya before he had even left his office for the morning, but she had set the task to him not just to dole out punishment, but to try and figure out what exactly the boy had even been doing in the first place, as she had only caught him on what looked like a return visit back towards the dungeons. He just needed the boy to slip up and offer any kind of information as to his actions. They both knew he wasn't likely to admit to them upfront, but he wasn't privy to just how little they knew, which was their advantage. The fact that his expression currently looked to be on the side of believing he really might be deserving of sitting out from the quidditch match did not bode well.

"It—it wasn't anything that bad, so... so maybe just... some House points or—"

"And you expect me to happily take points from my own House for this?"

"No! Just—I didn't do anything, sir, I swear, please don't kick me off the team—"

"Didn't do anything?" He repeated with incredulity, as if he had any idea what it was Wells was rebuking, which he hadn't the foggiest—but it worked.

"I... I... Well, at least I didn't damage it! I just... jinxed it a bit. But it wasn't meant to hurt anyone, I thought they would be able to fight it off easy, see, and..."

Severus let the boy trail off as his mind tried to piece together the jumbled nonsense, and slowly it clicked into place. Filch had been raving to Flitwick earlier about making the enchantments less feisty on the suits of armor for next year's Halloween, as one had come at him at the crack of dawn trying to lob his arm off with its dull sword. A suit of armor that he had specifically noted was stood in the hall the Gryffindors would take to get to breakfast in the morning. Well, that was that mystery sorted then, as the suit had already been dealt with. The more seasoned professors had certainly been right about one thing, the first true Halloween night as a teacher had been an experience, and now the morning after was proving to be just as eventful.

Wells was grimacing up at him with his head bowed, apparently out of ideas for his own punishment and waiting to hear what his professor would decide. But Severus imagined the scene of Filch sword fighting a suit of armor with a broom and allowed a taut smirk to appear on his face. "I believe... a stern talking to will do for now," he let Wells have a moment of hope before his demeanor dropped once more, "but do not embarrass me by getting caught repeating this event. And believe me, you will be caught so long as Professor Fawkes is at this school. So, I advise you: do not try it."

The boy nodded his understanding that he was getting off by a very slim margin, and scurried away to get his breakfast in.

Severus watched him go, finally letting out his sigh. He still felt an unrelenting tiredness in his bones from Slughorn's party nearly two weeks ago, and he just wanted nothing else exciting to happen for at least till after winter break. It was a feeble thing to hope for though, he knew. Even without a holiday of mischief, the Slytherins were getting bolder with their outright pranks. But he didn't have it in him to punish them, especially not Wells. He wasn't sure how to handle him exactly, but harsh disciplinary action, as far as he was concerned from his own experience, would only push him further away and into more trouble. It was an odd edge to teeter, but for now, this would suffice.

Much more gratifying than his confused thoughts, was where he suddenly noticed Freya to be at the moment as he made to follow into the Great Hall but stopped before fully rounding the marble staircase. On the other side, her eyes glancing towards him, was Freya, with her back to the wall and the Gryffindor Prefect, Adamson, posing distinctly as Severus could remember seeing half a dozen boys mimic through his years. His mood perked up with malicious glee at the look on Freya's face as she smiled painfully, diverting her eyes from both him and the boy that was speaking to her. With no one else left in the hall, Severus made no effort to hide as he doubled back around the staircase, creeping closer through the shadowy alcove until he could hear, hoping for an entertaining catastrophe.

"...and so, um, with my N.E.W.T.s coming this year, I was thinking it would be good if I could get some... some extra tutoring perhaps, and—"

"Mr. Adamson. Your grades are excellent," Freya said, her voice unnaturally chipper to the point of sounding icy. Severus's chest shook with silent amusement. It was delightful to be so correct about something that was undoubtedly causing the woman a great deal of irritation. He was sure she knew he was lurking nearby, and hoped she was already imagining how smug he was going to sound over breakfast after this.

"Thank you, Professor Fawkes, really. But, well, I was... I bet I would learn even... Um, well, maybe we could just hang out without studying, b-because actually I—"

" _Detention_ ," came a very odd sounding high pitched voice that could only be Freya but sounded more like McGonagall when she was too enraged for speech.

"B-but... I—"

"Detention, Adamson! I don't want to hear it, just—detention!"

There was a pause in which Severus, grimacing at the audible discomfort of the scene despite his silent laughter, waited to hear whether or not Adamson was going to step even further over that line.

"W... with you? Alone?"

" _No, not with me!_ "

He had hoped Freya's shout would cover up the snort that had just escaped him, but as he heard swiftly tapping footsteps coming nearer, he realized even covering his mouth wouldn't save him from being called out on this one. Tucking his hands behind his back and straightening up, he forced his derisive grin down a notch, but he couldn't quite keep the full ' _I-told-you-so_ ' look off his face. Long red hair swished over her shoulder as she rounded the corner on him so fast that she skidded to a halt, looking thoroughly incensed.

"With _him!_ "

His eyebrows raised at her jabbing finger, feeling like he was being given detention now, too. Adamson, looking bewildered as he followed behind her, appeared even more distressed when he saw the hidden person. "Professor Snape? I have to have detention with him?"

"Hello, Mr. Adamson," Severus said in a smoothly unaffected voice, "I hope you are having a fine morning to—"

"Three days! With him! In the dungeons! And you'll be having a meeting with McGonagall later- and if you try to talk me after class or in the halls one more time, I'm raising your detentions to a week, _and_ \- I'll have you sit in the headmaster's office while you write a letter to your parents explaining this to them yourself! _And keep your hands off my door handles!_ "

"Professor Fawkes," Severus said with warning, for while her fingers looked to be waving around pinched together in punctuation of her words, they too closely reminded him that she could snap her fingers and roast the crestfallen-looking student's hair off as punishment just as easily as write him a full year's worth of detentions—and she seemed plenty angry enough to do so. "I am certain whatever Adamson has done will be dealt with accordingly. But perhaps you should take a walk to cool-" She turned on him just as he had reached out a hand to lead her shoulder away and he snapped his mouth shut at the look in her eye.

" _Do not touch me_. I will— _Ooo_ —" She took a deep breath like she was preparing to launch into round two, but then merely let it out in a seething stream of air and said with finality, " _Go eat an apple, Adamson!_ " And she turned on her heel to march off in the direction opposite the Great Hall, leaving the poor boy to probably forever look at apples in a different light.

Severus watched her go before turning towards the boy with menacing delight. "Ah. Well then... I will see you later tonight for detention. And bring a change of shoes. It will be messy." He turned away from the look of confused horror and followed after the stomping woman, deciding he would rather sustain himself on chaotic energy this morning rather than muffins.

When his longer strides caught up to her, she shot a furious glance in his direction, but he merely peeked back with mock innocence, matching her pace down a long empty hall at the front of the school. Once they were out of earshot from any sound bouncing back towards the breakfast-goers, she exploded again.

"I cannot _believe_ —I am a _professor_ , for crying out loud! The absolute nerve of—well, just the—the stones of that boy!"

"Perhaps Gryffindor should have earned a few points for such bravery—"

" _Severus, I will_ —" He turned his head to take in her seething fury, holding up her pinched fingers again, but she merely sucked in air through her teeth and jabbed as if she were precisely placing an invisible pin over his face to shut him up. "I am _not_ in the mood."

He nodded once, pursing his lips to keep from looking altogether too pleased with this scenario, but finding this task extremely difficult. He wasn't sure if it was just the triumph of his prediction that the prefect would indeed go too far one day coming true, or having one up on her because of this, or just that it was extremely comical to see her looking mad enough to burn down an entire wing of the school—and not having the cause be himself. Either way, he was fine to quietly tag along, basking in the free entertainment.

"And he just," Freya continued, seeming to have found more to rant about, "he would just—linger around after classes to chat! Like I was a student! Did you see the way he had me cornered against the wall? As if I was some girl he was asking to the graduation dance or something."

"Do you think he will still try and ask you come time?" Severus turned with mild interest, and she twitched an eye at him, looking far from amused. He suppressed his quiet laugh, looking on ahead down the hall to hide his own malevolent amusement. "Can you really blame the boy though? You're quite—..." His mouth hung open silently on his next few words, and then snapped shut as his aloofness dissipated abruptly.

"I'm quite _what?_ "

He kept his eyes fixed down the hall, pressing his tongue against his teeth for a moment. "You're... quite short."

" _Short?_ "

He had to stop as she stopped, though his legs were more reluctant. When he turned to look at her, he kept his face impassively cool, no longer fighting back a grin as he quickly looked her over. Although appearing just as incensed as she had when she had first cornered him in his hiding place, hands on her hips and a small angry crease between her brows, she still looked every bit as she normally did. The morning light from the large front windows cast a pale blue glow on everything and only stood to highlight the red shine of her hair that framed her face and accentuated the gold of her eyes. He averted his eyes out the window towards the grounds.

"Yes," he said indifferently, "you're very... short. It probably confuses the older boys into thinking you're younger and approachable, since they're taller than you." His head snapped to attention as she suddenly marched straight up to him, much too close. "What- Don't use me to measure-" But she was already swiping her hand from the crown of her head to about his chin, though this was more to do with the fact that his chin was raised as he leaned away from her, and it looked like she was cheating by cutting across at an inclining angle.

"I'm not even that short! I'm just average!"

"Yes—alright—fine," he relented, finally having to back up as she got close enough under his nose that he caught a whiff of sweet-smelling fragrance.

Freya seemed unsatisfied with his response though, as she was still standing with her hand on her head, squinting at him from afar and making odd little salutes, muttering to herself, "Not short..." She finally seemed to let it go, alerting back to her more pressing issue as she stopped trying to stand up too straight and carried on walking, at a more casual pace. "And that's no excuse! I just—I've never even given any indication—and yet—what gives him the _gall?_ "

Severus followed in step with her at added distance, trying to avoid giving her room to get close to him again. He wasn't about to let this momentary interruption ruin his fun after giving up his breakfast time though, and he felt particularly more inclined to stoke the fire once more. "Ah, the gall to approach the princess herself?"

" _Shut_ ," she swatted at him but he easily side stepped away, " _up_ , Severus! I do not need your help to angrily rant right now, thanks _so_ much!"

Smirking, he settled back in to listen to the sounds of an annoying person being unable to take what she dished out plenty of herself. She went on indignantly about having seen two wizarding wars, and died countless times, only to be so disrespected as to become the subject of some schoolboy crush just because of, apparently, her height. Which was particularly hilarious to him because he had made the comparison to himself of the oddity that was imagining her in a war. She was much too ridiculous and light-humored to fit the image, and her current comical display perfectly exemplified this. Much in the way the Adamson boy must have thought, it was hard for him to imagine her as anything other than a bastion of open warmth and lightheartedness—even when she acted mad enough to snap a fire onto the head of anyone who may not be so swayed by these things as to hold back from ribbing her.

She went on so long that they had nearly walked far enough to give him cause to wonder if he might be late for his morning class, but he was currently too busy enjoying her suggestions for detentions.

"And the slugs—how poisonous are they exactly?"

"Quite poisonous, Freya, I assure you," he said absently, staring down a hall as they passed. An idea was slowly forming in his mind with regards to detentions, though not about which horrible thing to have a student do. It was a scheme that would take careful planning and mean doing something he might not be prepared for though, and he was still mulling it over.

"Good. Excellent..."

Pulled from his thoughts as the mental image that he was about to find a particularly diabolical look on her face came to mind, he turned to her and snorted softly when the reality perfectly matched up to his imagining. Her squinted eyes looked up at the small sound, and he evened his mouth out into a straight line at once, only to feel the corners tug again immediately as he stared at her murderously pouting face, finding she looked about as terrifying as a disgruntled cat.

"You're just having _so_ much fun with this, aren't you?"

"Yes," he admitted with no remorse, "would you like me to have the boy fetch the slugs himself, from the Forest?"

She shuddered as if this suggestion was actually something to fear. "No, that's too much... Can you even do that...? Actually, yes, do it," she said in sudden conclusion, with a wicked look in her eye.

It seemed as if her fiery rage had subsided and she was in a more fiendishly simmering stage that he hoped would not reignite if he openly laughed at her, because he couldn't hold back while witnessing this out of character Freya who supported his harsh plans while still coming off as soft as a shortbread cookie at the same time. Thankfully openly laughing for him was still a mostly soundless thing. "My," he said with feigned shock and reproach, "what will the other honorable staff think of this evilness from their dearly beloved Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?"

But she was no longer looking deep in conniving thought; she was staring at him with a look of pleasant bewilderment. "Do you... always laugh like that?"

He blinked, his face falling to a defensive frown at once. "Like what?"

"I..." She peered at him with interest, the corners of her mouth curling slowly, but she seemed to second guess herself, shaking her head as she finished her thought simply with, "No, it's nothing." Her pace slowed as she drifted into a moment of pensive silence, then said rather abruptly before cutting herself off again, "How have you been feel-" She pressed her fingers over her lips in an attempt to smooth her unfinished question away, but his frown had already deepened into a scowl.

If he was being honest, he had been feeling a confusing mix of vast blank lows, and oddly bright highs; but even more importantly he had no room to feel exploratory towards the source of either of these. He already knew what the answer was, and it wasn't something he could do anything about. Short of putting himself into a magically induced coma every night, he doubted there was any way he could block out the phoenix song that had vividly returned to his dreams since that recent night, accompanied by much darker things than he cared to dive into in the peaceful light of day. He felt condemned to, for the foreseeable future at least, ride out whatever uncomfortable emotions came his way like a justifiable retribution. But he could at the very least try to avoid directly acknowledging the night in particular that this had started after one particular party, and certainly dodge his mind away from any of the inconvenient details. No, he didn't much at all feel curious about phoenix lore lately, and was deeply enjoying the monotony of daily work life to bury everything under a blanket of business.

"Err... So, do you... think Albus would be mad if you dangled Adamson over a fire?"

He shot a sardonic grin at her, seeing she was trying to make up for ruining the mood, but entirely uninterested if she was now just faking it. Still, hearing her talk like this for his sake was, in its own way, endearingly corrupt. "I think he would be more shocked when I tell him that it was your idea."

The corners of her mouth turned up. "Pinning the blame on me, eh? Well, I suppose I am the evilest of the honorable staff, as you say..." She sized him up, then, with a mischievous smile, side stepped closer to him to speak in a lower voice, "But you take the honor of most conscientious Death Eater on staff." His face twitched at the audacity of her words, glancing all around them, but she was laughing off his alarm. "Aw, c'mon, Sev, don't worry—"

" _Don't call me that_ ," he snapped with sudden viciousness.

She blinked rapidly up at him, her smile instantly fading from her face. "I... Oh, sorry, ex-Death Eater, of course—"

"Not that—don't say my name like that, as if we're _friends_ ," he said with distaste for the word, stepping further away from her look of sudden shock. "We're not. I... I have class." And he hurried to take the next turn down a hallway that would lead him in a wide circle back around to the entrance hall, feeling as if he was running from more than just the woman's words.

By lunchtime, he didn't have much in the way of energy to keep up his hostility, and both him and Freya were busy making up for having skipped breakfast anyhow. She didn't comment on nor force unwanted attention to the earlier incident, as was often her routine now anytime an incident occurred, and he accepted this favor as part of an unspoken agreement for peace between them. She appeared to be nearly as inclined to forgo awkward conversations now as he was, apart from her minor slip-ups where she showed her annoying concern. If she was irritated at his lack of compliance with heart-to-heart mushy talk, it only came out in her enthusiasm to keep up their mutual bickering, an enthusiasm which he shared. She may have previously had the upper hand here, but he knew her well enough by now to give back in equal measure, and it made it much more enjoyable. He also knew that, while she remained abnormally quiet for the rest of the day and the following few after it, that she had an endless supply of bounciness to fall back on and would eventually return to her usual jolly self, with no change necessary from him—which was good, because he had no inclination to rescind his statement. Seeing as her physical presence couldn't be contained, it was imperative that he kept her at a mental distance. She could follow him around all she wanted, and even be enjoyably entertaining at times, but he would never accept her as a friend knowing why it was that she stuck so close in the first place. She was only there on orders as Dumbledore's pet, and that much would never change in his mind.

By the day of the first quidditch match of the year she was already wearing her normal expression of placid happiness at whatever private thought was in that head of hers as she caught Severus's eye and changed direction towards him and the small crowd gathered around him near the entrance to the dungeons.

"Nearly ready for the match then?"

The Slytherin quidditch team looked around to see her arrive, then gave a resounding cheer of energetic enthusiasm in reply, to which she leaned away blinking as the loud noise seemed to impact her with unseen physical force.

"They're a bit eager," Severus said, wearing a tight grin that showed his short patience for the rowdy team, but still trying to maintain an encouraging stance.

"Just a bit," she agreed, amused. Her face stretched to one of grim sympathy when a particularly strong gust of wind pelted the high windows with a spattering sound that made them all look up. "Perhaps you shouldn't be so enthusiastic to go catch a cold in the rain though."

"Aw, that's nothing—" "My flying gloves are lined with mink—" "Wait, you're coming, too, right, Professor Fawkes?" "Idiot, she's probably supporting Gryffindor—" "No she isn't, she's on Slytherin's side—right, Professor?"

Freya stood with her mouth open, unable to get a word in edgewise until the entire team was staring at her with questioning looks and she suddenly seemed to not have anything to reply with. It had been Wells who had last spoke, and he was casting the most hopeful look her way.

"I—… Err, actually, I don't much care for," she paused, self-consciously tugging at her hair as she tried to mutter the last word unnoticeably to the ground, "quidditch..."

This received loud protests from the Slytherin team, who appeared to be taking this as a cop-out answer from yet another non-Head of House teacher who would be supporting Gryffindor. Severus, who had been quietly watching this unfold to see her reaction, finally cut in himself, though with a much calmer tone as he didn't really care what her quidditch preferences were. "How odd, I could have sworn you told me once before that you loved to fly."

She tittered with false hilarity at his secret joke, casting him a warning glance. "Yes, well, that doesn't mean I like team sports."

He raised a brow, going further into double meanings with the same cool air. "No? I would have assumed you would be extremely loyal to one side in particular."

Her forced smile seemed to harden just slightly. "Actually, I don't find it very interesting to choose any side in meaningless games."

Wells suddenly cut in the middle of this, oblivious to his teacher's underlying conversation and apparently not convinced of Freya's detachment either. "But- you're always hanging around Professor Snape, surely you'll support us, right?"

Both professors looked back at him with such looks that he seemed to immediately doubt his convictions. But the boy's disheartened face looked to have an impact on Freya, and her expression softened to an apologetic wince, like she might genuinely feel bad for letting him down. They were her students, too, after all, and Severus knew her to be the type to feel bad for slighting the feelings even of a team she didn't support. He narrowed his eyes.

"Perhaps," he said smoothly, "you just won't admit where your loyalties lie in front of us? Going to sneak off to the Gryffindor stands once you've wished us luck?"

"No! Of course not," she piped up, warily eyeing the looks the team was giving her. "I... I would support Slytherin, of course... _if_ I was even going to go... and I did come over to wish you all luck, really..."

There was a disgruntled murmur of thanks from the team in response, evidently not at all impressed with her weak assurances.

"I can't believe," Severus went on, continuing his prodding, "that you would disappoint such a passionate team over a bit of rain." He was well aware why she was avoiding it, but he felt especially annoyed with her attitude of trying to play both sides. Putting the pressure on her stubborn fence-sitting was only appropriate if she was going to back herself into a corner making claims she couldn't support. He kept his eyes fixed to hers with a challenging expression as another gust pelted against the glass behind him.

"It's... It's more than a bit—" Before she could even protest, the Slytherin team cut her off.

"Just get an umbrella!" "You're a teacher, surely you know a spell or something?" "All the other teachers are so unfairly bias!" "Professor, I stayed up till midnight working on your werewolf essay between practice! Please?"

Freya seemed to diminish under the onslaught of pressure, the placating smile she was trying to assuage them with turning into more of a grimace, but she still wouldn't budge from her wishy-washy stance. "I'm... sorry but, I haven't got an umbrella, actually, so—"

Severus was on it before she could even finish her sentence, taking his wand out in one hand and conjuring a simple wrapped-up black umbrella in the other. He held it out with a curt smile, relishing using her own brand of obnoxious helpfulness against her.

She scrunched up her face, squinting at the offering as if checking it for any faults she could throw out to save her from taking it. "Ehm... It's not a very big one, though, is it? _Collins!_ "

Both professors' heads snapped towards the boy who had just let out an immature snicker, and Collins coughed over his laughter as half of his teammates snorted along with him and the others rolled their eyes with groans. The oldest and most embarrassed looking of them, the captain, ushered the whole team into motion under the building look of offense in the professor's eyes, and scampered off towards the front door with an apology, though it was mostly drowned out by shouts from the rest of the team that they had better both show up in the stands.

"I feel sorry for the girls on that team," Freya muttered with reproach as the sounds of Slytherin mirth died away, and a few more early watchers followed behind them to get seats, all bundled up to their chins against the freezing rain.

Severus had half a mind to agree, as he look down at the umbrella in his hands as if it had been made vulgar, but he had seen the team in action during practice once before. "They're Slytherin girls, they'll be fine." His eyes slid back to Freya, who looked like she would have been perfectly capable of jinxing any boy who annoyed her enough as well—if she had been a student and not a teacher, unable to get away with such. "And you? You're really going to let down such... pleasant students after you claimed you would support them?"

She cast him a withering look, stepping closer to speak with more privacy and dropping her voice to a low taunting sweetness. "No offense meant, but... you wizarding lot look dead stupid flying around on brooms. I'd rather just take off on my own for a day, and it wouldn't be on one where it looks like the whole lake is falling from the sky."

He casually passed the umbrella to his other hand, as if highlighting its loss of purpose to accentuate his words. "What a shame. I am sure they will be devasted to not have a professor cheering for them in the stands."

Her eyebrows slowly raised as she picked up on his wording, and suddenly her jaw dropped. "Wait... Severus! You absolute sneak—you said all that and you're just going to go hole up in the library or something now, aren't you?"

He allowed the corners of his lips to spread in a coy grin. "I was planning to, yes. But that shouldn't prevent you from supporting your _favorite House_ ," he said with sarcastic emphasis, holding out the umbrella and popping it open in her direction, making her take a step back. Holding it upright, he made a show of inspecting the size of its protective range comparable to her, then determined, "I am sure you won't get _that_ wet."

Her eyes took in the held aloft umbrella with supreme apprehension, making no move to take the extended favor. Then some sort of thought dawned on her face that made his grin turn upside down. His eyes went from his own hand, clasped to the little handle, to his pocket on the same side where he had safely returned his wand, and to her face, which was looking more and more like she was concocting wicked detention-level ideas on the spot; but he couldn't react fast enough. This was mostly due to the fact that her sudden movement involved grasping his out stretched arm into place as she stepped forward and turned on her heel into his side with a swish of robes.

"Well, let's _both_ not disappoint them, then. We can go together," she said with devilish delight, looking up at him from an abnormally close distance even as he tried to pry his arm out of her grip; but her hands held tight to the crook of his elbow in a show of more strength than he had anticipated. Apparently flying on her own two wings all around Great Britain had benefits besides not looking like a clown riding a cleaning instrument.

" _Get_ — _off—me_ —" He tried several more times to pull his arm free, but froze his movements when they attracted the attention of passing students, who looked extremely interested in why two professors were standing under an umbrella in the entrance hall together and arm wrestling at the same time. Freya gave a polite little wave, not lifting her arm, and they moved on, casting concerned looks over their shoulders.

"What's the matter, Severus? We're just _colleagues_ sharing an umbrella against the rain—nothing wrong with that, is there?"

Only one of them was likely to have the ability to breathe fire, but in that moment, he felt he might like to give it a go if it would keep her honeyed voice at least ten meters away from him. "I am _not_ -" he began, about to swear up and down that he would hex her off him if she didn't move, but then deciding there was a worse fate for the woman that didn't involve having to jostle his arm loose from its socket anymore. "You want to go to the match? Fine then. Let's go," and he yanked this time in the direction of the doors, only momentarily regretting leaving the safety from view of their alcove, as people would be able to stare openly now—but at least his meaning seemed to have taken effect, as he felt a strain against his forward momentum. He glanced down, sneering in success at her wide eyes taking in the pelting rain outside.

"Err—hold on—"

"No, Freya, let's go—"

"I don't—Um—"

"Let's go have a _fun time_ supporting our students. Come on now, people will stare if you—"

" _Severus, this is not funny, I am not actually going out there_ —"

But it was indeed hilarious to beat her at her own game to such a degree that she was whispering to him in urgent squeaky tones as he half dragged her to the door and pushed it open with his shoulder, looking down at her with malicious triumph as the bitter wind gushed in behind him, and said, "I certainly hope this umbrella is big enough for two."

However much he had thought his plan of counterattack made sense at the time—which, to be fair, he hadn't been thinking far beyond how to immediately get back at her for trying to pull such a stunt—as the pair of them made their way awkwardly across the grounds to the pitch, he was weighing the cost-benefit of this situation with a heavy hand. In particular, metaphorically, with his hand on the arm which was being clung to so tightly that he was trying his best not to look down and see exactly where it was his elbow was being pressed into. His eyes were fixed straight ahead through the rain, which out here looked more like sleet, obscuring the distant views if one tried to look too far away.

"I hate you," came a mutinous voice at his side, though it sounded muffled as if the woman was undoubtedly clenching her teeth, "I hate this, I hate _quidditch_ —" her voice sloped into a higher octave as the wind kicked up the rain into a sideways gust, "— _and I hate—the bloody—rain._ "

Severus jerked his arm feebly in a resigned attempt to shake off how close she had just leaned into his side. The least she could do was not cause him to lose his footing, but apparently she was compelled to vie for the most opportune positioning out of the rain beyond even reason, because she kept fighting him every step of the way. "Will you stop that? Trust me, I hate this more than you can imagine."

"Sure of that, are you?" she scoffed. "I am—" she lowered her voice to a steely hiss so that no one nearby would hear, "—a _phoenix_ , out in the _effing rain_ —and meanwhile at least you have a personal heater, so don't complain."

His lip curled in disgust. It wasn't exactly that she was wrong, so much that it was something he was trying very hard to ignore, determined not to appreciate any minuscule part of this situation, no matter how much the right side of his body currently felt vastly more comfortable than his left. "Personally," he hissed back, "I would rather freeze to death."

"Oh, now there's a much more fun idea than going to a match in the rain."

"With you? Absolutely."

"You're such a—"

But whatever she was going to call him was cut off as a group of students, walking at a swifter pace than their uncoordinated gait, came to a close enough distance that she held back her words, leaving him to wonder the rest of the way towards the stands. The moment he was close enough to make a wide step towards the door leading up one tower, he pulled the umbrella away and angled ahead of her, blocking the pathway long enough to let her get rained on for a second before she shoved him through, swearing in a voice that he wasn't sure the students ahead of them hadn't heard. They were excitedly climbing the stairs ahead though, and soon it was just the two of them left behind inside the tower. Before he could finish climbing the last flight, he was tugged back by his cloak to the dim landing, with only a small window down below and slats of light from the wood floor of the stands above providing an apt gloomy atmosphere to compliment the stormy look on Freya's face as she dragged him aside to have a word. Without even getting one word out, however, rain dripped from overhead, and she irritably adjusted their secluded talking spot to a dryer corner of the stairwell.

"You had better hold that umbrella steady during the match, or you're going to end up on the toasty side of warm," she threatened in a low voice. She was huddling closer to him to keep their conversation private from the tapping feet above, but he was more concerned with preserving their distance to recover from the past few minutes than her secrecy.

"Speaking of keeping warm..." He took out his wand and, using her momentary distraction as she was attempting to quickly put her hair into a protective braid, he conjured an oversized scarf around her neck. He smirked as she glared up at him, her hands and hair now all trapped beneath rough wool patterned in vivid green and silver. "You should be aware which stands you're in."

"I honestly do _not_ ," she made a particularly tight fold in the end of her braid out of agitation, "care a bit about your stupid House rivalry. All I wanted to do was wish you and your team luck and have a quick word in private—speaking of which," she finished messing with her hair and adjusted her new scarf, which she was accepting with more grace than he would have liked to see, before continuing, "all I wanted to ask you was how the final detention with... _you-know-who_ went last night."

All the irritation he was feeling from the day's events so far was promptly forgotten as he blinked back at her with a blank expression. "You could at least just call him Adamson instead of... that," he finally said.

"I'll settle for 'Gryffindor Perv' if you promise to take the blame if I get caught saying it."

"Deal. And it went..."

His eyes lost focus for a second as he remembered how last night had actually gone, and it was nearly as stupefying as the conjured mental image of him giving detention to an entirely different 'you-know-who', as the certified Gryffindor Pervert had blurted out half-way through the hour an accusatory, " _Are you and Professor Fawkes dating?_ " which had earned him two extra hours of every foul task Severus could come up with before his anger was finally sated.

"...fine," he finished, keeping his expression solid, "nothing out of the ordinary. Though I believe he may have had to write home for an extra pair of shoes."

Judging by the fiendishly fulfilled grin that split her face, Freya was fine with this. "Excellent. Perhaps he'll have a harder time following me around in just his socks."

He conceded a slight smirk at this, and for a moment, with her garbed in Slytherin colors and sharing in conspiratorial expressions beneath the House's own quidditch stands, he almost felt inclined to believe she would have been a good fit to be sorted into the same lot as him. Almost. At the very least, she pulled off green better than he would have thought. But his mind was wandering towards different things entirely than House rivalries, and this seemed as opportune a culmination of his thoughts over the past week as any to bring up what was on his mind.

"Actually... I was wondering," he began with slight trepidation, watching her face as she reacted to this change in tone, "would you consider that... a favor? And would you be willing to repay it in a similar manner?"

Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms, appearing to assume he was about to leverage this to the highest degree, but he kept his expression perfectly calm.

"By 'similar manner', I assume you mean me taking one of your detentions? Go on..."

"Correct. But I was thinking more along the lines of... not a punishment, per se, but..." He sighed, casting a glance at the wall separating them and the quidditch pitch itself, where it sounded as if the crowd was still waiting for the starting whistle below the sound of rain. "Perhaps you noticed how much Wells was looking for attention? It's... a delicate matter, but unfortunately he lost his father recently."

He kept his eyes on the weatherworn wood, taking in her expression without looking directly at it. Apparently she believed him well enough, because she immediately softened her stance. "Oh, how awful... I must have missed it in the papers—unless, it wasn't—?"

"I'm not sure that his family would have allowed the attention. No one is really meant to know," he said smoothly, and she nodded with quiet reverence.

So far, this was going exactly as he had expected. If she agreed, his plan to pawn off his rebellious emotionally unstable student onto someone more apt to handle this would go off without a hitch, and then it would be the problem of someone who actually wanted to meddle in the personal affairs of everyone and try to fix them. He hadn't been entirely confident in handing off his student so easily, feeling a bit protective of him despite not knowing what to do himself, but if she was willing to keep up her sunshiny act even to support Slytherin when her own natural colors were a perfect Gryffindor red and gold, well, she probably wouldn't discipline the boy any harder than he would. She was, at the very least, better at handling waterworks and sympathy than he was. But she didn't need to know the exact truthful details of the boy's personal life—just some made up story to turn up the pity would do.

"Severus, you know I—"

A high-pitched noise was muffled behind the sudden thundering of standing feet above them, but it wasn't the commotion that had caused the woman to let out a muffled scream. He himself had to wipe away the cold droplets of water that had just fallen from above onto his head as people stood up in excitement; apparently the players had come onto the field. As he smoothed a hand over his hair though, it was apparent who had gotten the most collected rainwater doused on them, choosing a most unfortunate corner to stand in. He let out a snort at Freya's unmoving stance, frozen in place by her disgruntlement and looking, he thought, like a wet cat.

" _I_ — _hate—quidditch_ —" She had a few more choice words to say that were luckily drowned out by the sound of a whistle and cheers from the crowd as she shook out her hair, doing nothing to remove the water that had already soaked into place. "Ugh—and now we're even missing it."

"Here," he said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice as he took pity on her and pulled out his wand, "hold still."

The same strong grip that had held onto his elbow latched onto his wrist with a quickness he hadn't been expecting in reaction to the harmless raising of his wand. His smile faded as she held his gaze, momentarily looking like she expected him to hex all of her hair off, but something in his forming frown must have made her change her mind. She blinked and looked away, lowering her hand to cross her arms again, still looking like she very much did not want to be messed with in the slightest. It was frustrating that she was so cavalier about his own personal space, but she held her boundaries to such high standards. Just because he had thrown one spell at her before didn't mean she needed to be so defensive. He forced his hand to move with extreme delicacy as he cast the spell to siphon the water out from her hair, watching it return to a dry sheen and feeling more than a bit regretful for bothering to help.

"Gee, you're so kind," she muttered, and he could hardly make out her sarcastic sounding words with her head tilted down, voice muffled by the scarf. From the small bit of her cheeks that he could see when he glanced down, he suddenly doubted whether she had just been defensive from an attack. As he finished up and repocketed his wand, he took a good step backward. She pulled the fabric away from her mouth and spoke with more sincerity, "But, as I was saying... and really, that is a kind thought if he's having trouble and acting out because of that... I'm just not sure what good I can do, but—I'll certainly try if it's something you think is a good idea. I trust your judgement."

He hadn't been expecting that level of sincerity and he wasn't at all sure what to say back. He merely stared silently at her as she offered up a hopeful smile, looking somewhat confused herself.

"Err... One question though. How exactly are you going to give him detention out of the blue?"

That, at least, he could answer, with a wry grin of his own. "He's a Slytherin with paternal issues interested in the Dark Arts. He'll get himself into trouble again in no time."

She pursed her lips against her laughter at the odd imposed description. "If you say so. But other than detentions... we had better go be proper professors and support him in this stupid—thrilling game or whatever."

"Yes. We should."

"And please hold the umbrella steady this time."

"Freya, it's very windy, I can't make promises—"

"Oh, shut up, that's it, I'm enchanting it in place the second we sit down."

But although she did indeed enchant the umbrella to hold its place in the air at their seat in the back-row corner of the small stands, and although it was her who was seated not on the edge of the bench, but on his right, with more leniency to move over, she still wound up huddled just close enough to his side that his right shoulder was teased with warmth while his left verged on shivering. He felt oddly put together as two mismatched pieces, and kept having to catch himself from leaning more favorably to one side, though Freya seemed not to notice. His previously self-imposed rule of never sitting next to her anywhere that she could get so close him came to mind more than once, and he wished phoenixes' solitary nature would extend to keeping physically away from people as well. Though, by his observation, it did—only not where he was concerned. There was nothing to compare his experiences to, and she did avoid crowds and dodge around people who got too close, even when he did it; except with him, and maybe it was just the situations he had been privy to seeing, but he always seemed to get a second chance and eventual pass. And, more conflicting, she would get close to _him_ without a problem.

He was glancing at her from his peripheral vision, when he caught a glimpse of her blowing onto her hands and felt the remnants of the hot puff of air as it diminished before it could warm him up, too, but he had to quickly cast his eyes away as she looked over to him.

"Cold yet?" she whispered as she leaned into his shoulder, causing him to lean a fraction away.

"Perfectly fine," he said, eyes on the match.

"Ah, I see," she leaned in even further, putting a hand over her mouth to keep her words from traveling to the row in front of them, "keeping warm with the fuzzy thought of supporting your students? What a wonderful caring professor you are." He tore his gaze away from the game to take in the mocking golden glint in her eyes, but even as he made to return it with an equal taunt, her expression softened to one of honest admiration and he kept his mouth shut, rolling his eyes back out to the pitch. He felt her shoulder shake against his with silent laughter, and then lurch forward as she suddenly called out. His confusion at her out-of-the-blue interest in quidditch cleared as he caught sight of the player flying passed, slowing down to wave back, and he was elbowed hard into returning the gesture, though much more self-consciously. Between the unmistakable, even from this distance, glow of pride from Wells before he continued on his flight path, and the enthusiasm radiating (quite literally) off of Freya as she beamed at him as if they had just been waved at by some celebrity pro player, the cold rain that continued on even after the game couldn't quite seem to settle into him any deeper than the outer most layer of his clothes.

The trek back to the castle was markedly different from their arrival. With Slytherins running past to share their congratulations via quick remarks to their Head of House, and Freya giving a fanatical play-by-play of their performance, there was no time even to bicker. Despite whatever she had said before about wizard flying methods, the atmosphere of excitement after a win on a close match seemed infectious, and Severus wasn't sure he would have even been able to coax her into an argument if he tried; not that he was interested to at the moment, smugly enjoying his first victory in his new position as he was. Plus she needed both hands to accurately depict the maneuvers she was explaining, which meant his arm was free to hold the umbrella without her grasp, though she did still occasionally rest her hand there as if making sure he was still listening. Even the wind was absent, the chilly storm dying down to a light drizzle that was so tame in comparison that even Freya held out a hand to feel the last of the drops before they entered into the cozy castle, warmed by the braziers in the hall.

All in all, his earlier plans for the day of being a recluse in the library went unmissed.

Unfortunately the pure peace of the day did not carry through the night, and deep into the late hours, he was awoken with a start to find that his prophetic words had come true sooner than he would have thought possible. Apparently he had understated the ability of an angsty teenage boy to get into trouble.

The careless thoughts he had gone to bed with, that the Slytherins would be sated after celebrating a win and surely would not do anything on this night, were dashed similarly to how his brain felt being startled awake at the sound of the alarm he had enchanted the dungeon stairs with as a precaution. It had been about a week since Wells had snuck out for Halloween, and Severus had almost given up placing and replacing the spell each night given that it had been quite silent every time—which was how he now found the hallway when he finally pulled on his robes to check the area. The perpetrators had hopefully booked it back to their dormitory at the noise, as they should have. He would have to wait till morning to single out the guilty faces before they headed out to breakfast, but he already had a feeling he knew exactly where to look first.

"I didn't do anything, Professor, I swear."

Severus moved not a single inch of his frosty stare, but he had no need to, as Wells's composure slowly disintegrated with each passing second as the rest of the students of their House filed out of the dungeons behind him, and he looked to be able to feel their eyes on his back. Severus raised his brows a tiny fraction and the boy tried again.

"Well... we were just... celebrating really late into the night, that's all—sir," he added hastily, nearly forgetting his manners seemingly from the concentration it required to lie so poorly.

Severus merely made a sharp motion with his head that his student should follow, and set off up the stairs with Wells silently keeping pace behind him. It wasn't until they were climbing the staircase to the second floor when the boy spoke up again, sounding suddenly worried.

"Where are... Professor, you're not taking me to the headmaster's office, are you?"

"Not the headmaster, no," he replied briskly, letting the yet unknown destination hang in the air. There wasn't much longer to wait though, and when they arrived at the office door, Wells merely looked confused. Severus watched this expression mingle with something else as he knocked on the door, and when there was no answer after a few seconds, not even a sound to be heard from inside, Wells spoke up again, uncertainly this time.

"Err, sir... I don't think Professor Fawkes is at the school, actually..."

The cool air of authority he held chipped just a bit as his eyes locked onto the boy's. "What?"

"It's just... Sorry, err," Wells uncomfortably shifted on his feet and looked away, muttering the next bit mostly to himself, "I guess there's no way I'm getting out of this, is there...? Well, it's just, you said last time as long as Professor Fawkes is at the castle, I'll get caught—I guess I'll get caught anyway, though, huh... But—I saw her leave late last night, that's why I thought it was... well..."

He didn't need to finish his confession for the rest to be easy enough to piece together, but still Severus didn't answer him, staring unseeing as he tried to make sense of the more puzzling mystery that had suddenly been presented.

Before he could make headway, they both looked up at the sound of an interior door creaking, and then the one they were standing in front of bursting open to show a frazzled looking Freya, most definitely accounted for and not missing. He noted, however, that she looked distinctly like someone who had just woken up, particularly that she was just pulling on her second shoe, hopping on one foot before standing up straight and trying her best to pass off her appearance.

"Ah... Good morning? To what do I owe—oh. Ohh, come in," she said with understanding as she looked between Wells and Severus, giving him a meaningful look and a nod, which he returned with a distrustful frown, more concerned now with what else was going on beyond his own plans.

It would have to wait until another time, as presently they all edged into the Defense Against the Dark Arts office—and edged in they did, at least in the case of Severus and Wells, both of them hanging back at the door to take in the sight of the room before daring to step another foot.

The small square room had been enchanted in some way to allow a high ceiling with skylights, and from the floor up to these, the place looked more like an outdoor zoo. Plants varying from tiny potted desk ones to full grown small trees took up much of the room and offered much of the trepidation to the newest occupants, as it was hard to tell at first what exactly was lurking behind every leaf. One thing was clear, there were carefully naturalized looking cages and terrariums, set up to be displayed as organically as possible, no doubt, but coming across more as hidden traps if one didn't watch where they stepped close to. Their occupants were all out of sight at the moment, but he was certain living creatures were in fact housed here; or what passed for living among creatures of a Dark nature. As his eyes adjusted to the onslaught of things to look at it in all directions, he noted that the largest tree, with a proportionally sized glass structure around most of it, contained the only viewable thing, though it was not Dark at all, just an ordinary extremely large tarantula—but below it, in a larger set up, there was one ten times its size. Both of the spiders sat unmoving, but he was certain they were alive, and almost certain at least one of them was a species that shouldn't be what he thought it was. He tore his eyes away back to Freya, who was fluttering about her desk, putting things away and hoisting off, to his further astonishment, what looked like a small muggle television out of sight beneath the wooden desk. It being well before breakfast time, he curbed his curiosity from inspecting the room any further, having taken in too many things already for his morning brain to handle and still having classes to reserve energy for.

He wished the woman just had normal boring ugly furniture like he had always been imagining.

"Please, do sit," Freya said brightly, all chipper despite her sleepy blinking as she gestured to two plain wooden chairs in front of her desk and took her own seat as well. Wells hurried to sit down in the only normal looking corner of the room first, as she was just opening a tin of treats and offered him one. "I have a feeling I know why you've been brought here, Mr. Wells," she said with a smile that didn't seem at all like the wrongdoing she was picturing could be very harmful. He was starting to wonder if she was being too nice to the boy, who shouldn't be looking so pleased with himself given his situation.

"Sneaking out after hours," Severus said, cutting to the chase, "again."

Freya shook her head with amused exasperation. "Really, how did you even have enough energy to be running around at night after yesterday's quidditch match? Just take the win and go to sleep."

Wells's boyish face, munching on his little cookie and going for a second from the tin, looked not the least bit sheepish for his actions—until his Head of House delivered what punishment he had been thinking of. The boy took no more cookies the rest of the short time in the office as his three days' worth of detentions were set up, even when Freya offered them with her most cheery grin, which stayed plastered to her face even several minutes later when she was following Severus down to breakfast, having sent Wells along ahead of them.

"You know, I was thinking about it after yesterday, and having a detention student to help me take care of things might be rather—"

"Where were you last night?" he cut in without caring about his rudeness.

She didn't seem to mind much either, judging by how undamaged her smile was. He recognized the impassive wall that was put up behind her eyes though, a particular expression he had not seen from her in some time, and knew she would not be answering him. All the same, the reluctance to answer was a tell in and of itself. It must be something of importance if it was worth keeping from him. If she really had left the castle grounds entirely, then there were only two reasons that he could think of that would leave her with a tinge of dark circles under her eyes, and both may have manifested another source to garner information from.

Over breakfast, she tried to keep up polite conversation between her yawning, but he was ignoring her—save for when he saw that she had tried to sneakily fill her goblet with wine instead of tea, and he had just as sneakily aimed his wand to turn it into water before she could take a sip ("Severus, you're an actual devil, you know that right?"). It wasn't long before what he was waiting for arrived, and he snatched up the Daily Prophet, scanning its pages for any deaths, harrowing life-threatening events, or particularly dangerous arrests. But there was nothing, and as he shot a narrowed glance in her direction, it was apparent from how she was ignoring his blatant attempts for information that the paper would not contain any. Out of ideas, he threw it back down on the table and finished his meal, determining not to let her get to him. ' _Just phoenix things'_ or 'j _ust Order things'_ —whatever it was, he didn't want to hear the annoying placating tone she would use to gently snub him out of the conversation if he was to lower himself to asking twice. Apparently, he just wasn't privy to such information.

The following morning, he discovered that, apparently, there was much information that he had been deemed unworthy of receiving beyond this.

He had even less of a desire to pursue it this time, but it turned out Freya would not let his scathing looks and nonresponses over breakfast go.

"Why won't you talk to me?" she said, as she followed him straight down the dungeon stairs, to his considerable annoyance.

He had left the Great Hall early, not even finishing his toast, so there was still plenty of time before classes for her to pester him unless he worked very hard to drive her off, which he certainly felt in the mood to do. Much of his silence was due to the fact that he couldn't even properly form his simmering rage into coherent thoughts, but she must at least be able to piece together the series of events—or she should, if she had half a brain and any sense of others around her, which he was currently doubting very much based on what had transpired last night.

"Need I spell it out for you?" It was the greatest amount of words he had spoken all morning, and she looked mildly surprised as he stopped his gait in the middle of the hall to round on her. "Just what did you think would happen if you blew off detention with a boy who has been sneaking out at night?"

Her mouth opened to reply, but it was a moment before she seemed to catch up to speed. " _Again?_ Does that boy ever sleep? You've checked him for signs of vampirism, right?" When he returned her lighthearted expression with one of disgust, her face fell into a defensive frown. "But... surely you caught him, and no one was hurt, right?"

He scoffed a humorless laugh, thinking of Wells's voice as he had told him last night that Freya had canceled their detention with only a note, delivered an hour before by another student. He had wondered how the boy would handle the detention and if it would make him resent her as a teacher, but judging by the face he had made as he relayed that he had been ditched, he was sure however much he had not enjoyed being given a punishment, what he had been feeling in that moment was abandonment.

"Sure," he said with bitterness, turning away from her to keep walking down the hall towards his office, "no one was hurt. If that's all you care about."

"Severus!" She jogged up to his side in earnest, but he wouldn't even turn to look at her. "I couldn't do anything, I... I have other responsibilities."

"All I asked you to do was _one thing_."

"And I wanted to do it!"

"That's the problem with wanting to help everyone, isn't it? You can't. You just start messing things up."

"That's not fair, I just... I had to go immediately-"

"Right, because your job is more important than mine." He finally turned his harsh gaze back onto her, and she returned it in confusion, momentarily struck dumb.

"Of... of course not," she said, completely unconvincingly as her eyes drifted away.

He let out an angry sigh and yanked open his office door, stepping over the threshold. "My mistake for asking you for help," he said, and shut the door a bit harder than necessary.

Classes that day were particularly tense; between him snapping at any little thing a student got wrong, to sitting at his desk, enclosed in his own thoughts, and looking about as approachable as one of the displays of dark creatures in Freya's office.

Restless sleep was hardly anything new to him by now, but on top of being woken up two nights in a row, last night, after sending Wells back to his dormitory following their short chat, he had laid in bed for an extra hour, unable to fall back asleep with his thoughts. He hadn't been able to sort out why exactly it infuriated him so much that she was going out of the castle in secret. Apart from the obvious, which was that she had disrespected the plan he had set in motion, there was something else deeper that was irking him, and as he replayed his own words to her from that morning over and over, he was beginning to paint an ugly picture as to why.

It was true; his job was less important. He was a glorified babysitter for a bunch of teenagers that were still struggling with the most basic of magic that he had mastered before he had ever even stepped foot in Hogwarts as a student. Meanwhile, the actual action, the important tasks that pulled much more important people away from mere trivialities, was happening elsewhere—and he wasn't even allowed to know the details. Earlier thoughts that Dumbledore was doing him a service by letting him focus on one specific job were starting to seem like embarrassingly idiotic faults from a weak mind. He should have spoken up again before now; tried harder to earn enough trust so that his actual skills could be of use. Really, he should have already been trusted by now after what he did on previous occasions, plus it had been over three months teaching with not a word that there was any kind of improvement to his status, despite the fact that he had been on his best behavior and endured quite a lot of breaches to his privacy. Was he really that untrustworthy? Was there even an end goal beyond just this?

What exactly was it about him that Freya was undoubtedly reporting to Dumbledore and making the headmaster write him off so thoroughly?

It was well past time that he could play nice with her; that route had been broken on their very first day, and he highly doubted even Freya would be airheaded enough to be tricked with flattery and faux friendship. Once, he had tried to help her carry back a stack of research books to their shelves, and she had stared at him with suspicion for twenty minutes, even asking if he was feeling alright. It was a while ago, but still, she certainly had too much of a measure of him by now to even attempt to build up a false persona.

There wasn't much to be done, then. He was simply trapped in a degrading job, where even his guard got to just up and leave whenever she wanted. Not enough of a threat to keep her here watching over him during nighttime hours, but too much of one to entrust anything of importance.

It grated his nerves to the bone, and by evening, as he sat alone in the research library staring with his quill unmoving over the paper he was meant to be grading, he could feel his jaw hurting from hours of clenching it.

However, he wasn't the only one who was in a foul mood that day. The stomping footsteps he heard behind him were so unfamiliar, he turned around to see who it was, not expecting Freya, or prepared to see her livid face. For a second she looked too angry to even approach him, but then she marched up and, going completely against their ingrained seating arrangements, pulled up the chair to his left that usually separated them.

"Lost his father, did he? Hm, Severus? Where'd he lose him at—a bloody Death Eater fair while he was off getting a pretzel?"

His mouth opened in surprise, but he had not been expecting to have to come up with a defense to his lie so quickly, and his thoughts had been elsewhere all day. Luckily, Freya cut across his silence.

"Thank goodness," she threw her bag onto the table and began taking out her supplies, slapping them down with unnecessary force, "that I finally got to fulfill your scheme, and have a moment alone with Wells, otherwise, I would have missed out on all the fun little details of his family."

Still holding himself perfectly still as he tried to come up with an appropriate response, he gently nudged some of his own papers out of the way to make room and give his eyes something else to focus on. He could always just feign ignorance, but something told him it would not fly in this instance. Plus, she was just angrily sitting down to do her work, not carting him off to the headmaster's office. He realigned his jaw as if readying his mouth physically to speak. "He... told you about that, did he?"

Her ink bottle was clinked onto the table so hard he thought she might have cracked it. "Thankfully," she said with much venomous sarcasm, "I was able to deduce as much with my massive intellect when he asked me if I had any family members that had gone Dark, and then proceeded to ask me about my father in particular. Wonderful at making casual conversation, that boy. Absolutely charming."

Severus let out a steady sigh, letting his eyes rest closed for a few seconds before turning in his seat back to his own work; but he didn't much feel like grading, and set his quill down to instead rub his temple. He wasn't at all sure what he had been expecting; Wells to just warm up to her and take in her positive attitude, become a less mischievous person overnight, and somehow not open up to her in any way, when he had obviously shown in the past that he was willing to blab things that should have been kept secret. But of course, he thought Freya was on the side of Slytherin, and its current Head of House.

"I'm trading back for Adamson," came a disgruntled mutter, and he turned his head to see Freya in much the same pose as him, leaning on the table with one hand propping up her face. She looked back at him from the corner of her eye.

"You... absolutely don't mean that," he said uncertainly, trying to dredge up even the slightest bit of their normal casual banter to make up for the mood.

Her stony expression held for a second, and then crumpled into a disgusted sneer. "Good lord, no, you can have him. I'll take the Death Eater's kid any day."

The taut muscles in his stomach relaxed, but he held his mostly rigid position. She had noted the distinction between father and son, and didn't seem to be outwardly thinking ill of the boy, besides his stunning lack of subtlety. He couldn't do anything about what would inevitably come when Dumbledore heard of this, but then, there were things she was, hopefully, still hiding from the headmaster about himself, so maybe this could be another such case. He had tried to be protective of his student, not wanting him to end up on some kind of watch list or gossiped about. He knew what it was like to be accused by mere association, and by every assessment he had made of the boy, he didn't seem at all likely to actually turn to that lifestyle, meaning he would just be caught up in baseless rumors—which was something that he knew for a fact pushed people into places they ought not to be.

"And," he spoke up, though it was quieter even than the hushed level Freya had set the moment she had sat down close for privacy, "what do you think of all this?" He still didn't take his eyes off his own papers, but he heard her let out a sigh.

"I think you're an idiot for telling such a stupid lie," she said without holding back, "and I have no idea why you kept it secret in the first place. It makes perfect sense."

He looked up at this. "Does it?"

"Obviously," she said with scorn. "I... Alright, I sort of get why you would just pronounce him deceased instead of... the other thing, but—either way, it's the same, isn't it? I get it." The crease between her brows finally left and she flipped her quill like a metronome slowly in the air. "He's just a boy without a father, either way, isn't he?"

Severus stared at her face for a moment longer before his eyes fell unfocused to the movement of her quill. He wished he could easily reconcile the Freya he had been furious at all day with the one sat beside him, looking just as concerned as he was, but wouldn't show, for a student he had no real idea how to help. He could list off a dozen things that probably wouldn't benefit the boy, he could shoot down every ridiculous idea that crossed his mind, but what he really knew was that Wells needed something that he could not provide.

A sudden thought was brought back to his attention, and he broke their silent reverie. "Did he say anything else about his family? His mother?"

Freya blinked back at him, then shook her head. "No, not really. Just that she's a busy person. Why?"

His eyes narrowed the tiniest amount. If he extrapolated from just that, well, it lined up with his suspicions that the boy probably hadn't been getting many letters back from his mother. Something else that he hadn't been able to ever get out of Wells himself, but apparently Freya just had that air of a feminine shoulder to pour your heart out to—if you were a child.

"Nothing," he said, turning back to his work with actual intent to do it this time, but Freya let out another more exasperated sigh.

"You do know," she said through her teeth, "that people on the same team are meant to work together on things, yes? Share information for the greater cause?"

"Oh?" His voice dipped towards a hidden venom at the same time as he dipped his quill to reink it. "Are they?" He did not raise his eyes as he drew a harsh 'x' over a student's line in their essay.

She didn't seem to have anything to say to this, and he wasn't inclined to pursue the topic of her own withholding of information at the moment, instead trying to clear his head from all the distracting thoughts so that he could actually settle in to get his work done.

With his hair covering his sideview and Freya sitting in an unfamiliar spot at the table directly next to him, it wasn't until he raised his head to look around at the time, having finished all his work, that he noticed she was sat with her own completed work neatly piled up, leaning on one hand and staring at him. He paused, taking in her posture that looked like she might have been sitting like this for some time, and the enigmatic expression on her face. It could be that she was just tired from the late hour, and, he suspected, probably getting even less sleep than himself the past few nights, or perhaps she was still somewhat irritated with him; but when she spoke, it seemed to be neither of these things.

"You know," she said quietly, her voice not holding any of her earlier anger, but more of a low earnestness, "you're an excellent teacher. If only you would just have a little more faith."

She didn't elaborate to where he should be putting this additional faith, but it seemed to him like she hadn't meant herself, and he was at a loss. She sighed, more heavily than before, portraying the weariness that he had assumed she was holding back from, and began packing up her things. He followed suit, gathering up his own bag as well. They said their farewells on the third-floor landing, and he went to bed feeling even more conflicted than the night before, and having just as much trouble falling asleep.

Whatever 'faith' she had meant, it became ironic over the next week that she had been speaking of blindly believing that which might not be seen, because he didn't catch so much as a glimpse of her over the entire seven-day course.

After the second day of eating his meals with only McGonagall in view on his left side, he had pulled Wells aside after class and questioned him about his detentions, surprised to hear that she had fulfilled her duties of completing all three. Wells even, more shockingly, had taken the time to thank him for letting Freya be his detainee. She was apparently still teaching classes, as well, which meant she was definitely still at the school- just nowhere near him.

He had only thought once about going to her office to question this, and then immediately settled in to a low simmering anger that he should ever be made to seek her out for anything. If she was too busy to keep up with her normal routine— _their_ normal routine—or perhaps she just no longer felt the need to keep it theirs, then that was just grand. Maybe he was finally being let off the hook of being followed around every corner, and he could get some peace and quiet.

Only, the quiet didn't feel very peaceful, and he was having even more trouble focusing on his work than usual. Which was saying something, considering she had created plenty of distractions when she was actually around; such as when she would irritatingly twirl her hair around her finger when she was reading particularly long essays. Or when she would gab on about some inane fact about dark creatures from foreign countries, speaking with such enthusiasm glowing in her eyes that she would not take his hints that he was trying to concentrate. Or when she would absently tap her nails on the wood surface of the table and then respond to his snapping with her mouth in a perfect little 'o' at her mistake that she still managed to make repeatedly...

He was currently sat in the research library, tapping a single finger on the same table, deep in his aggravating thoughts and staring at her empty seat at the booth like he was someone who had been stood up on a date—on Christmas—which just so happened to be their birthday—as well as the day after their mother's funeral.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and looked back down at the paper he had abandoned after rereading the same line seven times. It held his attention no more than before, but tearing his eyes away from the invisible occupant helped put his mind on a different, though similar, track.

It was the lack of information that was bugging him—truly, honestly. She couldn't even be bothered to tell him first that she was going to be busy, not even after a full week of this, not even a single chance to stop by and give him a heads up. He was still as unworthy of receiving the slightest bit of information from Freya the wondrously helpful phoenix, who was out doing good honest hard work, and had not a moment to spare for him.

Perhaps this was confirmation of his earlier thoughts that he was no more a threat than any other teacher and the necessity of their engagement had ended. He was a neutered agent with no risk and no job; no more need to waste a perfectly good worker on warden duties watching over him while he kept his head down and did his homework.

Only, it was eating at him so much, that he could no longer do either of these things.

It was late evening when he lifted his head and threw all of his supplies back into his work bag, storming out of the library and up several flights of stairs until he arrived at a particular stone gargoyle. The rough grey cement eyes held his gaze while he composed his thoughts. It wasn't until he had gone through the rest of the steps and been let in, when he was fully stood in the middle of Dumbledore's office, that the feeling of being a regretful intruder settled into his stomach. His knock had been answered politely enough, but he doubted by the headmaster's expression that he was very welcome, and it gave him pause to consider simply making something up beyond what he had really come here for.

Taking a deeper breath than necessary for his words, he started with an air of forced casualness, "Headmaster... to answer your question, I apologize for the late hour. I merely..." The mental image of Wells coming to sloppily weasel information out of him came to mind, and at the last minute he abandoned his plan of sycophantic pretense, looking up directly as he said his next words, "I wanted to know if there is perhaps anything wrong."

Dumbledore didn't so much as raise a brow. "Anything wrong?"

"Yes, if there is... something going on behind the scenes. If a problem has arisen." There was no more response from the old wizard than before, simply sitting in his desk chair, unmoving, and blinking as if he had yet to hear anything worth responding to. Severus bit the tip of his tongue until he had to relent that he must push further. "If there's anything that I can help with—"

"Severus," Dumbledore now spoke, letting his head hang down momentarily as if these words had brought upon him sudden weariness, "rest assured; there is no matter. And if there was, there are more than enough capable people in the world to take care of whatever problems your mind may have come up with."

Considering he knew for a fact that in the final stages of the war Death Eaters had outnumbered Order members by a vast margin and going into hiding after the fall seemed to have led only to more deaths and ugly duels now that they were in the process of being rounded up, he highly doubted this, but he held his tongue as Dumbledore continued. By the look he now cast, lowering his eyes to peer over his glasses at him, it seemed like he still had a point to drive home.

"I understand that you may be experiencing... difficulties with this job, it being so different from your last. But I do recall being assured that you would be perfect for it," he continued, and Severus did not like where this was going nor how the headmaster's voice dropped a frosty degree. He didn't remember ever saying that he would be 'perfect' in his interviews, only that he was obviously qualified, and the job description had quite changed since then, he thought defensively. "That is why... it has been so disheartening to hear that you have not been upholding your end of the agreement."

The large ornate grandfather clock against the wall overtook the air of the room with its ticking, providing noise into the otherwise silent space as the two stared at each other. Severus experienced that annoying reflex he seemed to acquire only in the presence of this man, and, despite otherwise holding perfectly still, swallowed uncomfortably. Thankfully he need not be left to focus on only the feeling of apprehension at his impending reprimanding, as he could cling to anger instead; anger that his last slim hope, that Freya had not told every bit of what he had been trying to keep from her, and by association, Dumbledore, was now gone.

"You do understand your orders were to report anything you might discover directly to me, I presume?"

"Yes, headmaster."

"And yet there seems to have been a snag in your ability to do so?"

Any slick words he could have conjured up to smooth over the tension would not come to him just then, and he settled for silently relenting to be spoken at instead. It was useless to try it on this person, anyway, so there was no point in wasting the energy. The most he could accomplish was to keep his chin held in place. He would not lower his head if he could help it after coming here of his own volition, knowing what he might collide into.

"I must admit, although I was disappointed that you did not come to me with the information regarding Mr. Wells, I do approve of the direction your mind went," the headmaster inclined his head, surveying him, "in regards to the deal you struck with Freya. Evidently, you recognize that she would be useful as... a guiding light, perhaps?" Severus did not answer, focusing himself on not letting his bitter contempt for this idea—failed idea, as far as he was concerned—show on his face. Dumbledore continued with a slow nod of his head. "Indeed. However, her duties... lie elsewhere; and take up quite a bit of time at that, I'm afraid." His face grew hard and his voice seemed to carry further on his next words although he hadn't raised his voice, "Which is why you should not be relying on her to do your own job for you. Do I make myself clear?"

Short of biting his lip, there was no way he could hold back from the injustice of being pinned with the blame for something she had agreed to help with all on her own—something he already regretted plenty having realized his mistake of relying on her for anything. "Headmaster, if I may—if we are in agreement that she is such a... _great pick_ ," he failed to keep the bite out of his voice at having to say this out loud, "then why is it not _her_ in this position to be dealing with these trouble students? This is a bit more than the job I applied for—if you recall, I applied for _her_ current position—and I... must insist that I would be better suited to it, and in the field with whatever duties she is so busy with currently—"

Dumbledore raised a hand to stop him and he had to bite back the rest. "Severus... I implore you, do not doubt Freya's capability. She does not doubt yours." Rolling his eyes in front of the headmaster seemed like an even worse idea than questioning his judgement on the placement of his employees, but it was very difficult not to in that moment. Being subjected secondhand to Freya's sympathizing was almost worse given who it was coming from. Dumbledore seemed to sense his hostility to these words either way. The old wizard let out a quiet sigh that lifted and dropped his shoulders as he folded his hands neatly on his desk, the wrinkles around his frown lines deepening. "You are here... to teach. And to guide. Children who have been raised in such an environment, such as Nicholas Wells, I am sure, will need someone within the bounds of a mentor who can relate in some way to-"

"And what of the boy's father?" He couldn't hold back from interrupting again, with the wound of this information being betrayed still fresh and knowing what was at stake. "What good are potion's lessons and House points going to do when he loses a parent? Either to Azkaban, or to some Auror looking to be a hero and eliminate everyone as fast as—"

"You know very well what I think of the ministry's authorization of the killing curse," Dumbledore said, his voice suddenly strong and severe. His eyes, reflecting the light of the candles in the room, no longer looked their vibrant blue, but a dangerous blaze. "Not everyone is like you, Severus; willing to take a deal or turn themselves in. We cannot change people's minds, however much we may wish to. We can only control ourselves... and I assure you no killing curse will come from a wand under my influence in that man's apprehension."

Whatever doubts Severus had about this, they couldn't stand up to the impressive visage of Dumbledore in that moment, and he believed that anyone taking his orders would not dream of crossing that line. As he stared in silence, thoroughly reigned back in, Dumbledore's expression seemed to at once both sag and become a stony mask of contemplation.

"That day, though, I am afraid to say... may be coming sooner than the boy is ready for. Severus... Whatever it is plaguing your mind, I must implore you: focus on your duties. Now, more than ever."

He went to bed that night with his stomach churning, embroiled in his own rage, doubts, and confused thoughts. It wasn't until he had argued through much of the complaints in his head, lashing out at an imagined Freya for causing all of this, that he realized that he couldn't remember the last time he had dreamed of phoenix song, and wondered if all of his cloudy thoughts were blanketing it away, deep down in his mind.

Three days later, the source of the cursed tune came back.

Though, supposedly, she had been at the school all along, he caught sight of Freya for the first time in over a week, in the Entrance Hall speaking to none other than Wells himself, with the rest of the Slytherin quidditch team gathered around as they readied for the second of their matches of the season. He could see her smiling face even from across the hall—as if nothing had happened. As if she wasn't part of, and probably helping out in person herself, the organization currently taking down the boy's father and securing him to a life of resentment and dark avenues to relieve that feeling. Not a care in the world, laughing away. Not an ounce of what he had felt the past ten days to be seen.

It was almost too much for him to hold back the surge of animosity and not storm across the room, cursing her where she stood.

One of the Slytherin team members facing his direction caught sight of him and called him over from where he was stood frozen on the spot, nursing his poisonous thoughts. They all looked over and he had no choice but to stroll up as casually as he could, pointedly staring at the students to avoid making eye contact with the lone woman. Apparently, by the Slytherin team's telling of it, she was preparing to go willingly to the stands this time, seeing as it was merely cold but not wet out.

"Care to come along?"

He almost couldn't force his head to turn in the direction of her words, but he eventually did so, taking in her expression just as it turned from hopeful to sheepish under his gaze. Seeming to want to fill the silence from his nonreply, she spoke up again with dampened cheer, "Err... It's good to see you, by the way."

The muscles in his face reacted as if to return her small smile, but he ended up just curling his lip in a sneer. He couldn't stay silent forever, and as an ominous idea was forming in his mind, he finally spoke, "Of course I will join. I just need to get something—why don't you go on ahead?"

"Oh. Sure. I'll meet you there, then?"

"Yes. Meet you there."

If she was picking up on the barely subdued anger in his voice, she didn't seem willing to call attention to it in front of the students, but he did catch sight of her smile falter as he turned to walk away. He waited behind a corner across the hall till she had left the castle, and then made his way up to the west wing of the library, with a particular section of books in mind.

When she found him, he was sat on a window ledge at the far side of the room, book in hand, and reading lazily. Her entry was the only sound to be heard, but he wouldn't acknowledge her even with feigned surprise, merely flipping a page he hadn't finished reading and keeping his head down as he remarked, "You were able to find me fast enough."

He heard her make an exasperated noise as she stepped closer, her shoes passing across his lowered gaze as she came to stand in the slot of light cast by the window behind him, and he finally looked up, keeping his expression blank.

"Thankfully you're very predictable, even when you lie," she said, her annoyance showing behind her thin smile. "We're missing the match, you know. But there's still time if we—"

He snapped his book shut. "I think I've lost what little interest I had in games, actually." He watched her smile gradually fade, but he didn't blame her for being confused. His tone wasn't angry; in fact, leading her into returning to the place he had originally identified her intentions had given him clarity. "I think... given that you were perfectly fine to take a week off, that there is no longer any need to continue the charade." Her face grew even more wary, apparently catching on now that he wasn't talking about quidditch and hadn't ditched her just to read. She showed no signs of recognition to what he meant, however, and the corners of his mouth curled in a bitter smirk. "Are you seriously going to deny it? You've been following me around fetching information back to Dumbledore on his orders like a good little pet for months now."

This definitely sparked a reaction out of her, and her mouth popped open in reproach. She didn't immediately reply, and he imagined she was trying to get her story straight before she spoke. What an awful liar she was.

"If this is about me telling Albus about Wells's father... then the only 'orders' I was fulfilling were the ones given to you, that you seemed to think were optional."

His mouth twisted at having to hear the same thing from her as well, delivered with much less intimidation. It seemed she was going to try to dodge his direct accusation—which was fine, because he had plenty more to accuse her of. "And you're happy to follow any orders, even when it means participating in taking away a father while lying to his son's face, are you?" Before she could reply, he cut her off, his voice finally matching his anger, "How can you just stand there and pretend like everything's fine?"

"Well, what else am I supposed to do—just ignore him?" she said, her shoulders raising in defense. "He's going to need support now more than ever—"

"Spoken just like your master, exactly what he said. Are you sure you're not a parrot?"

Her hands balled up into fists at her sides and his face grew more smug as hers displayed her flustered exasperation. But instead of rising to his taunts, the storminess of her expression parted to make an earnest appeal, "Well, have you ever considered that Albus might be right about things?" Her eyes searched his face, and, finding only leveled animosity in return, she then let out a deep sigh. "Look, I don't particularly like this situation either, but I have to— _we_ have to—keep calm and be the adults for the boy."

His confidence soured under this levelheadedness from her. It was everything he had felt too guilty to do himself, the very reason he had become complacent in his own imprisonment, unwilling to further burden himself with the knowledge that he would be directly culpable for his own students' parents. She said it as if it was so simple—but then, she wasn't already being buried under the guilt of other past actions. He still held stubbornly to the idea that it was more morally wrong for her to blur that particular line around the students, if only for his own need to be right without having to admit he found it difficult. And, more defensibly, he himself made no claims of being an advocate of light, but if it was her playing both sides, it was because she was a two-faced spineless pawn who couldn't think for herself and see the deep undertones of conflict in a grey world.

He ran his finger down the cover of the book in his lap. There was no need to flip it open to the chapter he had been reading to quote it though. " _'They are fiercely loyal creatures'_... Forgive me if I find it detestable that you could be so loyal to only one person that you would lie to the face of anyone else on command with no remorse, all while prancing about like you're so sanctimonious." His eyes slid up to harshly pin the accusation into hers.

Whatever heated thoughts were simmering behind her eyes, she was apparently choosing her next words carefully, taking in the full measure of him and the book, which earned its own narrowed look from her. With the square slat of sunlight framing her in glowing illumination and making the rest of the aisle of books look gloomy in comparison, he was reminded again of that first meeting in the library, with the gold of her eyes coming out in a dangerous way. He held her gaze all the same.

"You may have noticed," she said, her voice low and smooth, "that the loyalty of which that book speaks is something that has been hard won. I am loyal to Albus for good reason." Taking calm but small steps, she came forward towards him and he reflexively straightened up to mitigate the suddenly more apparent height difference with him still seated and her standing. "More importantly, I find you talking up the virtues of honesty quite funny... given that, despite your very reason for being here, you don't act like a person who shares the loyalty I have."

Her eyes were boring into his in that way that seemed to him to measure everything against their own pure gold to deem it worthy or not, and he stood up abruptly to dislocate the feeling of being under that microscope. Strictly serious or not, having the height advantage over her always gave him the pleasure of sneering down at her. "I am exactly as loyal as I need to be," he said with precarious truthfulness, glossing over any details of what his interpretation of necessity was in this regard. He took a step closer, enough that she did her usual Freya waltz of backing up immediately at the slightest intimidation to her personal space, and said in a cool but venomous tone, "I'm just not a _pet_ like you."

" _I am not a pet!_ "

He had anticipated her to get heated over this, and merely turned up his nose more as she retraced her previously retracted step, all trace of her attempts at appeasement gone from her face. This was fine, because in this instance, if she was mad then he held a considerable upper hand to pull an admittance out of her. "And yet, you wouldn't be doing any of this if it wasn't on orders. He snaps his fingers and you follow me around for months without question, everywhere I go, forcing me to events—"

"Has it really never occurred to you that I might just enjoy spending—"

His eyes widened as much as hers did, but as she realized what she was admitting out loud—which was far from the confession he had been searching for—she quickly looked away, and he composed himself once more with a dark scowl. So what if she did get something out of his company? As much of an incomprehensible notion as this was to him, he could at least acknowledge the tiny bits of entertainment that had come from spending time with her. Even so, it meant nothing given why she was there in the first place.

"You were the one," she suddenly cut back in with a jab of her finger, apparently having recollected herself and found new ammunition, "who kept showing up to the library, at the same table, all the time!"

He blinked at this, but he had a perfectly good explanation. "I... What good would it have done to avoid you? You would have just tracked me down like you always do, incessantly annoying me." He regained his temper and leaned forward, confident once more in his words. "I was only playing along with the ruse, pretending, so that I could stay ahead of you."

Her mouth opened, but it wasn't to speak, and he watched the realization of what he said slowly form in her eyes. Whatever triumph he might have felt at revealing that he hadn't been so foolish as to be deceived by her fell away as he saw the unmistakable hurt show plainly in a way that he highly doubted could have been faked. Of all the times he had said something to make her mad, even going so far back as the first night he had insulted her, she had at least looked strong enough to take it, or give it back in kind; but after months of what he now sorely suspected might have been actual honest amity, the expression on her face was one he could only recognize as betrayal.

"Who's playing games with who, then?" she asked in a hollowed-out version of her earlier angered voice.

There was nothing he could say to answer. His eyes searched her face more and more for any crack in her display, any small sign that she was putting him on, but eventually he had to accept that perhaps the only thing his pride was likely to have been right about was the fact that he was indeed better at deception.

A sudden movement brought his eyes back just as he was about to look away, and he was astonished to see Freya clutch at her chest. This seemed like a bit more than an overreaction, but as her face came up to show eyes wide with shock, he realized this was a stark shift away from their conversation. Indeed, it seemed her attention was being pulled out of the room entirely, as she darted forward and squeezed past him to look out the window. He followed her movements, startled by the sudden critical nature of them. When he pointed his head in the same direction as hers and took in the stage for whatever scene was causing her reaction, he sucked in a breath, for it only left him wondering what other pieces he was missing from the full picture. Before he could even lean away from the window to ask, she had grabbed his arm.

"We have to go."

"What—wait—"

There was no chance for him to pull away as she mimicked the time that she had so tightly clung to his arm under an umbrella what felt like weeks ago, and suddenly he was back at the quidditch pitch, only on the outside ring of the stands, out of sight and off to one side. The blast of warmth from her magic was nothing compared to the jarring cold of the outside air afterward, and he shivered, silently cursing that she got to be so exempt from the rules that she could just take him around anywhere. But before he could even adjust to all of this, Freya was dragging him by the arm towards the entrance, and as they rounded the edge, he took in what his mind had immediately jumped to with dread when he had seen her looking at the pitch from afar out of the library window.

A small procession of people was marching onto the path with much the same speed as they were, McGonagall at the lead. Wells was at her side, though as they grew closer, he thought this pair looked more like a prisoner being walked by his warden, funnily enough. He snatched his arm out of Freya's grip before anyone could see.

Much more pressing even than this sight, though, was the group trailing behind McGonagall and Wells, which was losing distance because one of their members, garbed in blue quidditch robes, was being helped along on either side by another Ravenclaw player, and Madam Hooch.

A heavy sigh hissed out from his side, and he tore his eyes away to take in Freya's distressed face, her brows knit. She met his gaze, and after hesitating a moment to let her glare linger on him, jerked her head towards the group containing Wells as it grew further apart from the closer injured one.

He nodded in resigned understanding, taking in a deep breath to let out a sigh of his own. Then they both split paths to carry out their separate duties.

* * *

_—***—_


	6. Acherontia

_—***—_

* * *

_"Cheers!"_

_"Hear, hear!" "Cheers!"_

There was a clinking of varied glasses over the round oak table, with a notable lack from one particular individual, who had gotten himself misfortunately wedged in the center of the booth between two people he was now trying hard not to engage in conversation with, even to so much as ask to be let out. He would have climbed over the back of the booth to get away if he could, but they were in an exact corner of the bar, and there was only a frosted street-facing window directly behind him, and to his left, a solid wall decorated in miss-matched moving portraits of previous patrons in various states of drunkenness.

Severus sipped the wine from his glass that he had not clinked, staring bitterly at the little decorative centerpiece on the table, already adorned in holly and tinsel despite it being no less than twenty hours into December.

A heavy-bottomed glass was set down hard within his line of sight, and he noted that it was empty apart from the melting ice left over.

"I think I'll have another!"

The man to his left chortled in surprise at this. "My word, madam, already running up a tab?"

"But of course, since I'm not the one who's picking it up." An elbow was placed down obscuring his view of the drained glass, and his eyes slid up with contempt to look at the woman who was wolfishly grinning his way. "Thanks ever so much, Severus."

His mouth stretched into a taut line before snapping back to a frown and he looked away.

"Oho! What a gentleman," Professor powers quipped, raising his own glass to him in salute to his supposed kindness, but Freya corrected him with a laugh.

"Oh no, he's not doing it because of that, I assure you. He just lost a—I mean— _won_ —a bet." He cast a withering look at her slip-up, silently pleading that she at least not openly mock him and keep her own narrative straight. Her grin brightened at his look, showing more of her teeth.

"Now that sounds like a story," said the fourth person at the table, the last of which to speak up other than when raising her own glass. The Divination teacher, Professor Trelawney, had much like him been dragged reluctantly to the table by her own friendly colleague when the two pairs had met on the Hogsmeade streets, and now she sat at the far left of the booth, opposite Mr. Powers. "What manner of trickery did you do to deceive-this man-into such a predicament?" He narrowed his eyes at her as she gestured rudely to his position, not at all happy that his avoidance of her had been broken, as she seemed about as fond of him as he was of her.

"Tricked? Oh, I would never," Freya said with glee. "He agreed to it willingly enough."

This was most unfortunately true, despite the fact that she looked like she had bamboozled him out of house and home.

The way that she so graciously began the tale saved him face in front of the two unwitting listeners, but the reality of the situation played out in his head as he tried to block out the details of her recanting, taking another long sip of his wine.

She had not, as she told it, come to him asking a favor to help her with her day's lesson. In actuality, he had found himself being ordered to spend his free period in her classroom for one day, by none other than Dumbledore himself.

On the day of the Slytherin versus Ravenclaw quidditch match, after listening to McGonagall chew him out, being backtalked by Wells who had been in a full-on mood at the time, and getting a disapproving look from Professor Flitwick as he passed by to check on his student in the hospital wing, the headmaster had cornered him before he could make it safely back to the dungeons for even a moment to decompress.

It had been a tense visit with hardly enough talk between the long silences to be deemed a conversation, and as he had stood in the middle of the office, he had wished he had not been there so recently making such bold statements.

"It would appear," Dumbledore had said, "that despite my heeding, you have neglected to properly look after your students. And now one of them has attacked another. Normally I would say you should have disciplined them more, but I find it rather understandable in Mr. Wells's case... However... I am informed that the rest of the Slytherin quidditch team leapt to his aid as well, and had some worrying things to say to top it off. Things that I am sure you will recall from your own time here would not be tolerated from any student.

"Severus... If you wish to rely so heavily on Freya that you fail at handling things yourself, then perhaps you should sit in on one of her classes and learn from her directly how it's done. But do listen well: _you must learn from her and apply it yourself_ —I am not advocating for you to continue this reliance. Freya cannot be in two places at once to help you out."

And so, he had wound up stood in front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, stomach twisted into furious knots at this injustice, and his fist held over the door to knock without actually accomplishing doing so before it was opened and Freya invited him in. At the very least, she seemed to take his murderous mood seriously, and did not poke nor prod him, merely offering up a chair behind her desk in the only gloomy corner of the room. To her credit, or perhaps her discredit depending on one's views on lying, she at least seemed competent at coming up with fake stories, and had run the details of the excuse she had made up for his being there by him before any students showed up.

"You want to duel me?" he said incredulously, finding the notion that she would willingly put herself at the other end of his wand given his current demeanor twistedly hilarious, if not outright suicidal.

She gave a nervous laugh that rose and fell much less harmoniously than her usual one. "No, not really, to be honest... but do you have any better ideas?"

He didn't, apart from his own non-plan which was to sit there silently the whole period, pretending he didn't care whatever the students would say about this, as it wasn't their business anyway. Her idea at least involved participation, and, much more tantalizing, it also meant having an excuse to take out every bit of bitterness that had been compounding in him for weeks on the woman who had been the source of most of it. And hopefully embarrass her in front of her own class, as well.

"Perhaps we should set some ground rules," she said hastily, eyeing his fiendishly eager look. "No water—I'm serious, Severus, _none_ —and I will of course return the favor by not setting you on fire if I can help it."

"No singing."

"Of course not—in front of the students, are you mad? Ehm... and about Dark magic..."

He raised a brow. "Surely you're not scared already, are you?"

"I'm scared of you giving the students ideas."

He considered this for a moment, wondering if it was worth the catharsis if it meant sticking his toe over the line while he was already in trouble. "Nothing that can't be found in the libraries then?"

"The _non_ -restricted sections, yes, sure."

"You're really taking all the fun out of this."

"Well, you're not here for fun, now, are you?" He returned her chiding smile with a sour one of his own. Apparently she was enjoying herself and had determined he was not entirely unapproachable, because her eyes now seemed to glitter with an eagerness of her own. "However... I see no reason why we couldn't make this more interesting..."

He slowly straightened up from his slouched position in the chair, the corners of his lips curling as he leaned towards her with piqued curiosity. "I don't think more interesting for me will be preferable to you."

Dropping the rest of her apprehension, her grin fully alighted, issuing the challenge with her eyes before she had even given voice to it. "As I recall, you're plenty competitive, so I assume you would at least be interested in putting stakes on this?"

He squinting, running his fingers under his chin in thought. "What kind of stakes...?"

"How about... at the end of the week, winner buys the loser drinks—gentleman's agreement rules."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "And what sort of deal is that? One for a coward who thinks she's going to most assuredly lose?"

"How about one to preserve the pride of someone who I know will" -she took a smooth step forward and leaned down closer to his face- " _absolutely_ not pay up after I embarrass him in front of a bunch of children."

He had held her locked gaze for a long moment, deliberating whether it would be more rewarding to make her pay for him after beating her, or best her on her own terms and get to gloat. It had been her wickedly taunting smirk, biting her lip as she slowly raised her eyebrows, that had finally distracted him from her eyes sparkling with the challenge and made him quickly agree without thinking further.

" _Deal._ "

"And so—you _lost?_ "

Freya's musical laugh cut across the many merry sounds of the crowded bar at Powers' question, not sounding the least bit ashamed.

"Oh yes, quite spectacularly. Severus is just too good for me." Her head tilted an endearing smile his way, but he could see the same gleam behind her eyes as from the classroom, and he felt another wave of irritation at her for baiting him into this trick. He slouched further against the plush leather booth seat, hiding his frown behind his wine glass.

Perhaps the most annoying bit was that she had not even been that bad of an opponent, despite whatever modest claims she made. They had been taking it slow for demonstration purposes so that she could explain things to the class afterwards, but even so, she was quick both in her movements and in intuition—and frustratingly unflappable. He had thought, what with all he had seen of her reactions to certain things- all the times she had backed up when he had gotten too close, and especially her dramatic displays towards rain- she would be easy to crack under pressure. But his vision of her being too light for war was crumbled at the look that had been in her eyes then; of one who cheated death like it was no more than a game and probably fallen to more gruesome things than he was allowed to conjure in that classroom at the time. Her main position in the duel had been one of defense, making him think she really hadn't wanted to fight, but even so, there hadn't been the least bit of concern showing on her face even when taking particular spells head on.

"An important part of defense is foreseeing your opponent's moves," she had later explained to the class, while Severus sat back in his gloomy corner looking, despite being the victor, like a bat that had been caught out in daylight. "If you take the time to hold still, with good defenses, and let them come to you, it'll give you a chance to plan ahead, and countering will be easier than if you were just focused on attacking."

"But Professor, isn't that how he was able to hit you with that... that creepy snake binding thing—isn't it scary to lose the upper hand like that?"

"Ah, no, because snakes are not scary, and I hadn't lost the upper hand if you were paying attention. An opponent that isn't trying to outright kill or maim you might just try to intimidate you instead. It's important to not get distracted by things like this and focus on your main objective: counterattacking. In that particular case, I didn't need to waste time dodging, freeing myself, or blocking, because I had foreseen that he would immediately try to impede my movements, and used that time instead to make sure that at least my wand arm was free—all I needed, really—and counter on him. No needless movement necessary."

This was a bit of a cheat in his mind, as she had prior knowledge that he wouldn't be wasting time trying to cast something directly on her that would undoubtedly not work, but would go for something physical to attack. It took only simple elementary knowledge to see that line of reasoning, nothing to brag about. Naturally, this meant his win could only be had by either impairing her beyond casting, or taking away her wand, which he had eventually done in the end.

And it meant that the victory was entirely hollow because she could have easily just switched to wandless magic. The only thing their duel had done was make it so that he was hungry to actually fight her, without need for restrictions, and then see if she would look so cool-headed or if there was some merit to her confidence. A part of him thought it might be worth it to see someday; the true full-fledged fiery power of a phoenix that was hiding behind her eyes that betrayed no fear of Dark magic, injury, nor death. It just may be a fun test of his skill. And when he inevitably bested her, it would be that much more satisfying.

Too bad, then, that she had gone back to her dopey smiling self after that, pestering him all week with hints that she could drink like a fish so he had better bring enough coin.

However, there had been another less obvious outcome of their duel, in that her jabs came at all despite sounding, to him, more subdued than usual. She was quieter that week, even for her regular post-incident quietness that he assumed she did to give him space. He had looked up from grading more times than he could count to find her staring off into the fireplace, quill hovering over a half-marked essay, or her planner open but seemingly forgotten in her hands. He suspected that if they hadn't been forced to interact for his punishment, and if she hadn't gotten to have such dastardly fun at his expense, she might not have even made jabs at him, or he might not have seen her at all.

The stakes she had set now seemed like just a scheme for them to meet up, with the excuse of a binding verbal agreement and alcohol to ease the air. He wondered if she hadn't been thinking he would have been the one avoiding her all week. Even when she had tentatively invited him to go to Hogsmeade early to do a little walk around the shops, he thought her expression had looked just a bit saddened, as if she had no hope that he would say yes—and when he had agreed, her enthusiastic smile hadn't reached her eyes.

He couldn't imagine exactly what it was going on in her head, but then, he was trying to completely avoid thinking about it. As Dumbledore had said, his focus had become entirely too swayed, and he couldn't be bothered to spend so much of his mental energy sorting out every enigmatic expression that crossed the woman's face. It no longer mattered whatever it was that she was hovering around him to do; following orders, or for her own meddlesome entertainment—or masochism, given that she hadn't changed up her routine after his harsh words in the library. Nor did it matter if he stuck to his own routine of frequenting the research library as well, as if nothing had happened. He just needed to focus on himself.

And so, he had followed her around the snowy streets of Hogsmeade from shop to shop, absorbed in his thoughts about not thinking about her, and barely contributing to the conversation.

He had been vaguely aware of walking in and out of multiple shops filled with clothes, from one with various dress robes, to one for more outdoor and everyday wear, but Freya had not returned from speaking with the shopkeepers carrying anything, only explaining that she was ordering things for later. He had stood staring at a handsome-looking brand new briefcase in a shop for quills and parchment, while she was busy purchasing a new planner that looked exactly like her little black leather one that she had been looking to be writing near the end of recently. When he heard the teller recite the price of it, he wondered what on earth leather it was to be so costly, and in a show of separating himself from her own extravagance, decided his beat-up school bag suited him just fine.

In the same school of thought, he had determined that keeping up appearances of their—" _companionship_ "—suited his needs, at least for the time being.

It wasn't that he had gone back on his thinking, or that he even fully trusted that what she had said hadn't been one big ploy, or that it even made a difference given that she was still the same as he had always known: loyal to Dumbledore, annoying, and hanging around whether he wanted her to or not. But as he had quietly watched her during their tour through the streets of Hogsmeade, looking the same, mostly, as she had before her disappearance for over a week, just as happy as always, he had thought of her in a different light. He had considered how charming she could be around him, but then whenever she left, he would realize he had been just going along with whatever she had said or did without even properly thinking it through—just like the bet before the duel.

It was ironic that she was a shapeshifter, because he had decided that to him, she had two forms beyond her feathered self: that of the Freya who could turn even a punishment from Dumbledore into something that he could almost enjoy—and that of Dumbledore's pet, who was just an extension of the man himself, potentially scheming and reviling him just below the surface in the same way the headmaster did, only she would throw on a fake smile while she paraded around, where her master could not.

Her smile didn't currently seem to be fake though, sat in the pub chatting away with Powers. He wondered if it was the fact that she was nursing her second drink making her more at ease in a crowded place, or if she really believed a word of what she had told him the other day over grading. The point had been brought up by him that this was as akin to a party as one could get, which should be illegal by their past spoken standards after the Halloween fiasco, but she had thoroughly refuted this, saying it was entirely different. As a radio somewhere was turned up and a chorus of hearty song broke out and was picked up around the room, bringing together a knot of people at the main bar, his eyes narrowed at her cheery face, dubious.

She was turning her head around excitedly to look at the merriment, just about to stand, when his hand whipped out to grab her by the elbow.

"No," he said with stern fatigue, making sure she was placed fully back on the booth seat before letting go. She crinkled her face at him, scooting over for the first time to talk directly since they had been seated.

"What, I can't go sing?"

" _Absolutely_ ," he enunciated slowly through his teeth, keeping his voice down from the other people at the table, " _not_ ever in my presence are you allowed to sing."

She reeled back her head and blew out a disbelieving puff. "What are you going to do, stop me?" There was a deeply mischievous look on her face as she remained completely still before doing a small jerking motion in a feint that she was about to jump up, making him twitch. She laughed and relaxed her posture. "Severus, it's not the same thing, don't be so stiff. I'll be right back."

Before he could protest further, or refuel his certainty that whatever came out of her mouth would all be musical in the same way, she had gotten up out of his reach and, with a quick wink, dashed off to join in.

This was much closer to the Freya he had always assumed she would be at a party, though he noted she did still stick to the side of a fellow friendly Hogwarts teacher, carefully avoiding having a regular Hogsmeade citizen put his arm around her shoulders with a smooth duck and an apology. He looked away with a snide smirk, finding this funny despite himself.

But despite whatever she had said, as he stared unseeing into his wine, keeping his hearing alert, he could clearly pick out her voice from the crowd, and it did make his heartbeat become uncomfortably noticeable in his chest. He sat his glass down on the table to avoid drinking any more too quickly, as this sensation was bringing attention to the subtle feeling of alcohol in his veins, it being much stronger here than the polite dinner wine at Hogwarts.

It wasn't anything close to the phoenix lament, this was true enough, at least. For one thing, her voice now was human. It reminded him again of his split view of her.

It was the idea that this was all fake, stemming from a single command for pretense to get close to him, that gave him so much apprehension. He felt like he was going around in circles, ruminating on things that he already knew, but needed restating nonetheless. Because a part of him, deep down, wished that she wasn't just a pet following orders. A part of him wished that she was just... Freya. Troublesome, overbearing, taunting—he could have dealt with that version, if it had just been that. But perhaps that was just the sound of her singing getting to him and making him sentimental. Or perhaps he had been angrily sipping at his wine too much.

The path towards the door he had been eyeing, thinking he might just make an escape while he could, was blocked as Freya returned and penned him back into the booth, placing down another drink that she had apparently gotten from the bar while she was away.

"See? Nothing terrible happened," she said with a smile that faltered just slightly at the look on his face. Not to be diminished, she leaned in with her hands on her chin. "You could have some fun, too, you know. I bet you have a _lovely_ singing voice." She fluttered her eyelashes at him in a mocking way.

"Or," he began, copying her sarcasm with an icy bite to contrast her honeyed one, "I could just throw some coin on the table and leave, seeing as that's all I'm here for."

This dropped her smile, and her jaw, as she slapped her hands down on the table. "You wouldn't! That's not all you're here for, c'mon..." He leaned back as she scooted over closer, turning eyes wide and pleading on him and making him roll his own away; but all he had to look at to his left were the other two at the table, who seemed to be in an argument about one of Pluto's moons. He returned a leveled scowl towards her.

"What exactly am I meant to do, wait for you to drink until you pass out?"

She folded her lips in to stifle a laugh, giving him an almost pitying look. " _Or_... you might try actually making conversation instead of just eyeing your drink like you think someone's going to poison it."

He begrudgingly looked back over at the other two professors, one of whom in particular he most certainly did not want to talk to, but before he could quietly convey this to Freya, the other woman in question loudly banged her fist on the table, sending her many bracelets clinking like a pocketful of keys.

"That's it! I won't hear this—this—rubbish about ' _oh, perhaps it's not actually a planet_ '—do you have any idea the power in Pluto—Charon as well—"

Mr. Powers was shaking his head in a way that made his combover flop, and he cut in across the Divination teacher with a small polite raise of his hand. "You must understand-this is not a demotion, but a furthering of our knowledge. Think what this could mean if viewed as a metamorphosis of the very symbol of astro-transformation itself!"

"My good man, if what you're saying is true, then... much as I am loath to accept it, it would mean Pluto may no longer be lord to the invisible plane as previously thought, but a gatekeeper to realms of new consciousness not yet explored!"

Severus turned a deadpan look back to Freya, who was staring at the pair in open slack-jawed bewilderment, like she might be wondering if she should go tell the bartender to cut them both off. Her eyes slid over to meet his in disbelief, and he raised his brows in a silent ' _go on then_ ' fashion, daring her to try 'making conversation' with those two. Her mouth perked up at the corners and she closed it, smoothing her face into a mask of polite curiosity as she leaned in across the table.

"Err... Sorry, couldn't help by overhear, but... are you talking about Divination?"

" _Astrology_ , dear, astrology," Trelawney corrected her. "Do try to use the correct vocabulary when speaking of the Divine Studies, they can be ruthlessly complex and deep in lore. One without a tactful mind for detangling the subtleties of the art are bound to find themselves woefully lost in the galactic smoke."

Severus watched Freya's frozen smile with concealed satisfaction, counting how many times she blinked before finally speaking again. " _Oh_ ," she said in a high voice, dropping her gaze to the table. Not to be outdone, she picked it back up at once with her cheer revitalized to try again. "It's lovely to finally get to have a proper sit down with you. Mr. Powers speaks so highly, but I hardly ever get to see you."

"And for good reason," Trelawney said harshly, looking Freya up and down with barely concealed reproach. "An omen of death such as yourself would only bring chaos into one's life."

At this Severus finally lost his composure and had to pretend to have taken a sip from his wine and choked on it to cover his laugh. For the first time, due to someone other than himself, he watched Freya's preciously crafted smile fall fully from her face and her hand lightly touch her chest, looking wounded.

"I _must_ agree," Severus spoke up, quickly swiping a hand over his mouth to force his smile down. "I've always thought her to be completely disastrous." She didn't seem as inclined as him to hide her reactions, gaping at him with full offense taken and raising both her palms above the table.

But the Divination teacher was equally unimpressed with him, it seemed, and he remembered too late why he had been avoiding her in the first place.

"And _you!_ " Trelawney pointed a bony finger straight over the table, making Mr. Powers lean back for fear of being hit by her swinging assortment of wristbands. "Just as bad, even _worse_ —never before have I seen a darker aura than on this one."

Freya turned a triumphant sneer on him, as if she hadn't just gotten the same treatment. "Oh, do tell what omens of darkness you're reading from his 'aura'," she said wickedly.

"I have no need to—the biggest sign that this man is up to no good was when he was caught eavesdropping on my job interview," Trelawney said with a huff of indignation, appearing to be still sore from the incident as if he had personally wronged her.

"He was what?" Freya said with confusion, but when she looked at Severus and saw him shake his head imperceptibly, eyes smoldering with fury, her expression shifted to startled understanding. He clenched his jaw tighter, silently admonishing her for being so forgetful as to lead the conversation down this path—and making his mind similarly travel down that dark path that had all started with him overhearing what he had in that interview. " _Oh_ —we don't need to talk about that—"

"Oho! Quite eager to get a job at Hogwarts, was he?" Mr. Powers cut in jovially, looking obliviously between them but thankfully less interested in the light transgression. "Can't blame him, I was a bit overzealous myself."

"Yes, quite," Freya agreed quickly, speaking for him and smoothing over the conversation in a most annoyingly helpful way that he could have easily done himself. "Say—what was that about me being a bad omen again?" Still, it was admirable of her to take the spotlight back, if only because he would much prefer her get shackled with the ill-fortuitous fates than him, and he certainly did not want to speak another word in Trelawney's direction.

"Not just _bad_ , an omen of _death_ ," Trelawney corrected her again, with the same air of only doing so to make things more dramatic, with a heavy throaty note to her voice. "You think there would be an exception just because you also symbolize the resurrection of life? Not in times such as these! I want no chance of that two-headed beast."

Freya looked to be struggling greatly to not show the woman the definition of beastly behavior, but she continued. "And what makes you speak like that about it?"

"Because, my dear cloudy-minded woman, what is it that follows after life itself? _Death_ , of course. Always waiting at the door, chasing at the heels; like a moth to a flame, death is always drawn towards those swathed in so much underappreciated life, lurking just behind, the scales of its wings dusting darkness into the very air around you..."

Severus made a small display of checking behind her back for her, raising his brows in feigned solemn reverence of this warning despite finding nothing but long auburn hair. Her eye twitched. "If I see any moths I'll be sure to show them a good flame then, before they put a hole in my robes."

"Her Sun is in Cancer, you know," Powers chipped in with a serious tone. A look of deepest understanding passed between the two professors sitting opposite, and Freya's defensiveness seemed to increase.

"What's that look supposed to mean?"

"Makes perfect sense," Trelawney nodded sagely.

" _In what way?_ "

"Perhaps, dear, you would let me read your cup there, I'm sure I could interpret further with irrefutable physical proof if you are curious about the forces surrounding you..."

Freya looked down at her glass and then back up, beyond skeptical. "You can read cups of... firewhisky?"

_Of course it's fire whiskey_ , Severus thought to himself, unwilling to speak up and break the spell of this absolutely captivating conversation, but still finding he needed to take a moment to inwardly roll his eyes at her on-the-nose choice of drink.

He listened with shrinking interest as Freya had her month's horoscope determined (' _Death_ — _and great peril_ ' shockingly enough), appearing more and more like she was developing brain rot as she was bombarded with useless information that he himself was trying to deflect from infecting his own brain.

His thoughts were drifting more towards what she had so hastily managed to cover up before the dangerous topic had settled in the air much like the pine-scented aroma that seemed to permeate the pub, masking some of the scent of alcohol.

She hadn't been there, or at least he didn't remember seeing a phoenix sitting in the room when the door had been opened by the barkeep, revealing him to Dumbledore and the then only aspiring Divination teacher. Perhaps if she had, she would have done something very Freya-like; followed him back to where he was taking the prophecy he had just heard, tripped him up with a puzzle like a sphinx in his path, set him on fire—anything. But then, even Dumbledore hadn't stopped him, and what had transpired wasn't worth the 'what-if's when it was by now so set in stone.

More to the changeable, unknowable (to some lesser beings, anyway) future, and the present from which it would be formed, as he absently tilted his wine glass around, watching the liquid swirl, he wondered what on earth he was doing in a pub that was playing Christmas music over a radio, sitting with a trio of people he would have liked to avoid under all circumstances. Almost all circumstances. Freya could be granted a pass, as at least in comparison to the other two at the table she could be entertaining at times, but this was only allowed in his deepest thoughts, never to be repeated out loud.

But was she _just_ an entertaining distraction at this point? He felt the need to berate himself for potentially falling even close to the idea that she had brought up a week ago. _'You're the one who kept showing up to the library.'_ And he had agreed to come here; agreed to even more than he needed to beyond the sake of the bet by accompanying her around Hogsmeade. A bet which had been, in his mind, an excuse for her to drag him along to spend time together without having to be so bold as to actually just ask- but from the opposite end, the same could be said of him. He could have just backed out on the whole thing and not even agreed to show up. Yet, here he was. Taking the same excuse.

If he was going to admit to it, even a bit, he had to give himself the highest degree of leeway.

Four months had passed, and the feeling of being an inconsolable hazardous maniac had long gone after the first of these. This was just his usual reluctance to be around other people now. At least, people whom he deemed irritating or beneath him, which was most people. The group that he had felt least like this around, however, hadn't exactly panned out for the best. Now for what passed as companionship he just had... this. Some sort of table of rejects, each one of them clinging to their varied alcohols like a lifeline.

But then again, even his 'old friends,' who were now mostly locked up or on an Auror's hit list, hadn't ever been people he could talk to about certain things. He had to go even further back than his post-graduation activities, and further still, back through the years, to get to a single person whom he would have let drag him anywhere, to any party, or pub, or otherwise, to her heart's desire.

But that bridge had long been burned, the water underneath it poisoned, and the land thoroughly salted. The old neighborhood never quite looked the same.

If he drank any more wine, he might actually have to admit to himself that truthfully, more than he felt lost in the world and his place in it, more than he felt alone without a cause, he felt deeply and irreparably hollow; both like a cold, lifeless black hole that was sucking into it whatever around had mass to pull, and like a rabid deranged dragon, ready to defend against anything that dared get close to try and fill this hole. A tug-of-war that kept a part of him always held taut.

As he took another long sip from his glass, he couldn't decide if it felt like drinking an antidote or a poison.

"Alright, there?"

He looked up at Freya's trying-too-hard attempt at a casual friendly smile, her concern clearly showing through in her upturned brows, and he leveled back a cold scowl, holding his glass in place over his mouth. It wasn't the first time he felt like she could read his mind despite however well he had been concentrating on holding his facial expression in check. He wished, with a bitter, icy chip to his heart, that she was a different woman entirely; or else that he could just completely ignore all the trouble that she caused his mind and shake something out of her to make himself feel less chaotic.

Just as he was lowering his glass to tell her off, there was a sudden chaos of a different kind.

Professor Trelawney let out a scream that pierced the bar clear to the opposite corner. The room went quiet in response, with only a witch's festive wailing tune on the radio playing out eerily into the still silence. The people he could see directly in front of their table all turned to look at him, including the three sat there, guided by Trelawney's wavering pointed finger. However, as his eyes snapped to Freya's, wide and golden, he realized they were actually fixed somewhere above his head and slightly to the right. He whipped around to look over his shoulder out the window.

Only, the window was harder to see out of than earlier due to the addition of packed frost, and it was rapidly gaining in fractal spires, eating up the yet still translucent panes of glass. This would-be beautiful display could not hold his attention, however, as much more horrifically ensnaring was the hooded figure lurking in the outside gloom, illuminated only from behind by the orange glow from a streetlamp.

A small shiver went up his spine that only partly had to do with the decline in temperature he abruptly noticed, as he stared at the dementor barely a foot away with just warped antique glass between them.

A cry went out around the bar exclaiming about the very thing he was looking at, and as the sounds of many scuffling people behind him broke out, he willed his hand to move the few inches from the booth seat to his pocket to grab his wand. But before he could seem to break out of his transfixed stare, a sudden heat pressed down hard on the back of his hand, breaking him out of his spell. He looked down and was surprised to see that his hand was not being burned by some sort of projectile warmed oven mitt from out of nowhere, but another hand. And when he looked up, it was Freya that had manifested right beside him on the booth, with one hand wrapped around his elbow and the other all but pinning his palm to the leather seat cushion.

He had wondered before, during the day of their duel, what her face would have looked like had she at all taken him seriously, without the playful look in her eye before and after, and now he knew. She stared back out the window as he had but with all the preparation that he'd not had time to obtain—or maybe it was just that she had someone to defend that was making her look like she would melt the glass with her gaze. She was so close he could see her eyebrows knit tight beneath the line of her fringe, and when she blinked, glancing towards him without moving an inch, he could see each lash framed around eyes of hard gold. She didn't repeat her unanswered question from before about his wellbeing, and he wasn't inclined to speak of how he felt in that moment, because his instinct to yank his hand back and tell her to stop being so overbearingly protective was being hindered by the wondrously warm calming sensation working its way up from his fingertips into his chest. Thankfully he didn't need to do any moving, because she broke the eye contact first, separating herself from him on her own when the threat had drifted away out of sight from the window. He felt unusually grateful that she didn't return to her original distance, but stayed close by.

As soon as everyone at the table turned their attention towards the rest of the disquieted pub, he gave an uncomfortable little shake of his arm, trying to get his blood feeling back to normal.

"Now _really_ ," the barkeep was shouting at a man that Severus could only see the back of, but thought just by the look of his distinguished grey cloak that he seemed somehow familiar, "a _dementor_ in a place like this? Who's going to attack you while you have a drink?"

"Apologies, miss," he said in a gruff voice, "still can't be too careful. It's under ministry control though, rest assured." The man turned to look out the window of the front door, where his ghastly guard had evidently drifted. "See? And I'll just be in for a quick round."

The other patrons seemed about as placated as the barkeep herself, who gave a sour look before returning behind the bar to get the man a drink. Chatter returned in a subdued disgruntled murmur.

"Nasty place to have it, isn't it? Just poor taste really," Powers said, smacking his lips after taking a long drink, still shuddering from the chilly air. "Should be a saying about that—'gentleman walks into a pub with a dementor for his protection, leaves with several enemies.'"

Trelawney was agreeing as she went back to her own wine glass, but it was Freya who seemed suddenly most put off despite the fact she had just stared down the dementor herself. She had turned to face Severus directly, propping her elbow up on the table and stretching out a tight grin at him. He thought she was being obtrusive to his feelings again, as if he would be so soft as to be affected by such a thing, but then he felt something hit his knee. Glancing under the table, he realized it had been her anxiously bouncing leg, and when she apologized for bumping him, her tone was clipped and distracted. In fact, she wasn't even looking at him anymore, her gaze tilted downward just like her head. His eyes went over her shoulder, towards where the ministry man was now looking around the bar with a drink in his hand, directly behind her hunched back. It was too late for him to warn her by the time he made sense of the situation- the man had already spotted her very obvious long red hair.

"Miss Fawkes?"

He watched her wince and glance her eyes to the corners before turning around.

"Ah—Mr. Gale?"

"Aye. Dumbledore's niece, right? Haven't seen your face in a while."

"Yes, it's been a minute, hasn't it?" she said, in what Severus could only understand as a perfectly performed voice.

His eyes darted over to Powers and Trelawney to see if they had picked up on the same thing, but neither of them looked the least bit reluctant to accept the ludicrous idea of her relation to the headmaster, and he suddenly felt like he had been left out of an elaborate prank—though perhaps for the better.

"But you _can't_ be just getting off work, surely?" Freya went on, "It's so late!"

As he took in the nearing face of the man in the low light, his own internal switch was flipped, because he recognized this face with the name to go with it—from his pass through the ministry during his trial.

He straightened up and mentally shook off the remaining jitters that the dementor had left over, feeling the alcohol spike with his heartbeat and wishing he hadn't been wallowing quite so thoroughly.

"Ah, afraid so. Long days still to go," said Gale with a weary grimace, and to Severus's displeasure the man took the last step he could before coming to a standstill at the end of the booth beside Freya. He kept his eyes on the little holly centerpiece, watching from the edge of his vision as an awkward second lapsed before the woman scooted over to make room and his chest released the breath he had been holding, silently sighing with irritation.

"Well, please, have a seat! No one here minds, right?" she asked around the table, all chipper and smiles at the hearty reply of "The more the merrier! _"_ from Powers and a noncommittal raise of her glass from Trelawney. She neatly tucked her robes under her as she moved closer to his spot in the middle of the bench and cast a glance his way. She hadn't directly made eye contact, but he could tell she was checking on him before turning back to the other man. "I don't get to see much of you these days. New job and all that."

"Ah, yeah, how's that going? Are all of you teachers then?" A fifth drink was added to the table in the form of a heavy mug and the antique wood strained to take the newcomer's weight as he hefted onto the seat. Freya slid another half-inch closer, now looking like she too was trapped in the inopportune middle of the booth, but still maintaining her placid smile as she made introductions.

After reigning in Trelawney from giving the man a deathly fortune, Powers hastily introduced himself before launching with intrigue into the man himself. "And, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but you're not an Auror, are you?"

"I am," Gale said with a steely expression, apparently not boastful, but all business. Severus had his eyes on one of Trelawney's bangles as it reflected the flickering candlelight from the room, but the turn of the man's head was unmissable. "And you are... I recognize you."

Severus turned with mild surprise, finally looking the man in the face. The deep lines around his eyes stood out at the angle from the light behind, and he did not blink, looking like a dog that had just spotted a fox in the hen house. "Ah... Yes. I'm the new Potion's master," he said, skipping over acknowledging that they already had met before in hopes to wipe it away.

"Yeah. I know," the man said, not moving his eyes as he stated this unsettling knowledge that he was for some reason aware of the Hogwarts teaching positions. "Dumbledore hired you on, didn't he?"

"Hired us both, actually," Freya cut in smoothly, leaning forward directly through the line of eye contact. "It's been nice not being the only new teacher, Severus is good company."

He could only see the back of her head, but he imagined what expression she could be wearing, and if she could possibly be so stupid as to actually appear openly hostile towards the man. If she interfered, it would only make things worse and more suspicious. But from his expression, the man seemed to only be mildly put out.

"Is he now?"

"For the most part," Freya nodded, before turning to look at Severus with a teasing grin. "He can be a bit stuffy, though."

"' _A bit_ '," Powers said under his breath, but was amplified in his glass and he looked up as he realized he had been heard. "Well... well," he said with a sheepish chuckle and a shrug.

"Oh, come on, he isn't _so_ bad," Freya said in an easy-going voice, "he came out tonight, didn't he?"

Severus jumped on this at once. "All thanks to you for inviting me," he said, mimicking her calmly composed tone and even offering up an uncharacteristic smile. It felt odd to pull at the muscles in his face in such a way, and he reminded himself not to go too far out of his natural mannerisms.

She returned the smile and finally leaned back in her seat. "Well, I had to do something to get you out of the library, or else you'd work yourself to death."

"Pardon me for taking my job seriously."

She laughed, and if he didn't know any better, it seemed like the sound had been just a bit louder than necessary for a polite titter at their banter, and slightly more musical. The atmosphere of the table relaxed easily back into the same levity throughout the rest of the room, and between Trelawney wanting to discuss how many ravens the man saw in a day, Powers wanting to be regaled with tales of valor, and Freya's lighthearted manner, the Auror didn't seem able to get another chance in at grilling the acquitted Death Eater at the table any further.

It was an odd feeling, like having his hand held as he was trying to walk a delicate line, the same as when she had obnoxiously clung to his arm at the first quidditch match, except without the physical discomfort of his personal space being invaded. His first initial reaction was to irritably will her to stop overstepping into his own problems, but in truth, she hadn't. Not in a way he would have assumed she would, anyway. She was simply... there. Less like a coddling hand leading him along in the conversation, and more of a springboard to bounce off of. As if she trusted him to know how to do it himself, she was just propping up what he already could do. It did agitate something else in him though, as he watched her smiling face whenever she would turn towards him throughout the rest of the conversation. She was rather good at controlling a deceptive narrative.

As Gale the Auror recanted some of the stories of his work, those that he was allowed to share with the public anyhow, Freya wound up inching further and further away from his gesticulating hands, until she was encroaching into territory similar to that of a shared umbrella with him. But much apart from his feeling that day, he didn't fight against it. It was warm in the pub, with a fire going somewhere in the back of the cozy building, the heat of a decently packed room of people, and the cups of wine flowing through him, but even so, he could distinctly make out the difference in temperature of his right arm. For once, instead of his mind puzzling over whether or not she was a liar and a trickster, he felt more drawn in by the idea that if she was, she might actually be impressive at it. Even fun to work with. He felt that if he were to let himself be pulled in, he might be able to directly test something; to tangibly, with finality, determine the truth of her.

When at last they finally left the bar, he was beginning to think he might be able to just flat out ask her anything and get a direct answer, as he paused his stride down the Hogsmeade sidewalk to turn and look at her with amused disdain.

"You're drunk," he stated unnecessarily as he turned to keep walking after she had corrected her footing from her stumble over a pavement stone. She was giggling as her boots tapped back up to his side.

"Am not," she declared in a forced stoic tone, as if to verbally will herself sober. "Perfectly fine, thanks very much."

"Not setting a very good example to the students, are you?" he chided.

She scoffed and raised her hands, looking all around at the deserted side street they were cutting through. "What students am I meant to be role modeling for? Their curfew was hours ago. And are _you_ ," she poked a finger into his arm hard enough that she teetered to the side before leaning back towards him, "anyone to talk?"

" _I've_ only had two cups of wine."

He watched her face go blank with surprise and then a hugely amused grin broke out even as she tried to suppress it. "I meant—that's not—" She had to pause to let out a snort of laughter. "I meant because of the whole little thing of you being a Death Eater, you doughnut."

"...Oh."

She doubled forward with laughter as his expression went from realization to cross in an instant. He picked up his pace, wondering why he had ever thought for a moment it would be a good idea to encourage her to speak, but she quickened up as well, patting at his arm as if to hold him back.

"Wait, wait, but that's _good_ , Severus, so good—only two cups of wine, with a side of terrorizing Britain for a decade, you truly are the eptinemmy—… the... _epitome_ of true class."

"Shut," he roughly brushed her hand away, "up. _I_ didn't do that—and would you mind getting the story straight if you're going to talk about it so loudly? I was only _accused,_ and _acquitted._ "

This only caused her to bark out another laugh, harsher than before. "Oh, yes. ' _Accused_.'" Her tone made him turn his head and he saw a strange glint in her eyes, her smirk darkly mischievous, before they stepped off the street into the shadowy canopy of trees on the wooded path back to the castle. In the dim nighttime light, with the contrasting bright white snow that hadn't been cleared away here and crunched underfoot, he thought that even her hair appeared darker to match her expression, seeming not to glow as usual. She continued on in a low taunting voice, "It certainly wasn't _you_ that was using all manner of foul potions to get information out of ministry and Order members alike."

If he hadn't been the equivalent of relaxed for him that evening, and if he had ever expected for even a second to hear her bring up his past activities, he may not have been so caught off guard. Thankfully most of his activities from that time had included needing to keep his face in check when accused of such things, and he quickly stopped himself from showing more than mild surprise, though his skin felt rather tight.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, turning straight ahead, though his pace had slowed down considerably.

"' _Are you really going to deny it?_ '" Her mocking sing-song version of his own words were thrown back at him and she snickered at his sour side-eyed glare. This unconventional tone to her laughter was not hitting as it usually did, and even her smallest laugh seemed to be upsetting his heart.

"How would you know?" he asked harshly, turning things around on her. "Been following me around for longer than I thought, have you?"

She shook her head and waved this accusation easily away, opposing his defensiveness with a lax tone. "No, no, nothing like that. I just used to sneak into the ministry and check their investigation files." This got his attention fully back to her and he stared for a moment in punctual silence. She laughed in the same mischievous way as before. "Well, the ministry didn't always cooperate with the Order, did they? Thankfully they also aren't very aware that I come in two packages."

"The... ministry has records on me?" he said in a stiff voice.

Her smile faded and she peered at him curiously. "Of course not. Not last I checked, anyway. Just a huge list of unsolved incidents." With her smile gone, her expression looked more like an uncharacteristic frown as she turned to stare straight ahead. "You think Albus could have gotten you off so easily if they did? They respect him well enough, most of them, but plenty are starving to round up every last Death Eater, and won't listen to anything he has to say about the details. And with everything going on lately..."

She trailed off, her gaze traveling farther down the dark pathway. After a second of letting the incredulity of what she had just said wash over him, he took the chance during her silence to organize his thoughts.

So there was no concrete proof then. That still wasn't much of a comfort if she was picking out things that he had, in fact, actually been involved in. He hadn't administered any poisons himself, but he had known exactly whose throats they were going to be shoved down, so it wasn't much of a deflection. Despite having never killed anyone, and despite knowing that his morals certainly lay on a different side of the line than most—at the very least, he did hold these actions he had done for a cause he didn't believe in to a higher degree of scrutiny than he normally would. He was guilty either way.

On another note, he now wondered if the only reason she had defended him from Mr. Gale was to cover Dumbledore's own skin. If it was found out he had hired a legitimate Death Eater with evidence against him, surely it wouldn't look good. He couldn't fully twist this into a point against her, though. This, at least, was something that made sense to him. Protecting her master's reputation, and keeping up her own deception. It was easier to understand if that was the reason versus if she was just doing it for some annoying meddlesome reason of protecting him. Plus, either way, it was still keeping him out of trouble, and he couldn't exactly bite that helping hand. He might wrinkle his nose a bit at it though.

However, all of this did propose a slightly unnerving proposition...

"What... else... do you attribute to me?"

By her sly sideways sneer, even in her tipsy state, she had caught that his words had been carefully chosen to not agree nor disagree with her accusation.

"Oh, I dunno..." she said, lazily looking up at the sky through the trees. It was still clouded over from the recent snow, though the air was clear and crisp now. "A few things with varying certainty. Definitely, for sure, the ransacking of the ministry's archive branch." She shot a smile at him that looked a little too wickedly pleased for what she was accusing him of. "You _can't_ convince me that wasn't you."

He kept his face impassive, twisting his tongue around his mouth before deciding this was innocent enough. "I didn't... ransack it. I only took a few things."

Her eyebrows quickly shot up her forehead, her mouth falling open in disbelief—and then her head went back in a cackle. "Oh, _begging_ your pardon—didn't ransack the place—oh, _heaven forfend!_ " He was already rolling his eyes again, clenching his jaw after feeling the loud musical laugh stab at his chest and not wanting to hear any more chastisement from her. But she stole his attention back anyway, trotting a bit ahead to get in his line of sight. He watched in grumpy silence as she pulled out her little black planner and held it open in front of her face so that just her eyes showed over the top. In a sudden dangerous scowl to go along with her adopted voice, as she said dramatically, "How _dare_ you accuse me, Severus, the most clean-handed Death Eater, of manhandling a book? I would _never_." He could see the smile crinkle at the corners of her eyes even though it remained hidden behind the planner.

He blinked wearily at her. "Are you quite finished?"

She snapped the book shut, but continued on in her poor imitation of his voice—he was starting to wonder if she was just that bad at impersonations or he should be extremely offended by her low sneering drawl.

"No, I'd _never_ blast a bookshelf over, but I _would_ leave the librarian in such a state that he couldn't so much as remember who had written ' _Shorthand for the Short of Patience_ ,'" her voice finally returned to normal and she made a glum pensive face, "and it was him that wrote it, poor chap. Did you have to Confund him so hard?"

He didn't answer for a moment, his eyes slowly following along various animal tracks left in the snow going this way and that, seemingly without order. When he spoke, it was with a small shrug. "He was sharp. He would have remembered otherwise."

"Hm... Well, what about that one muggle incident in—"

"Enough," he snapped so harshly that she fell silent. He didn't want to hear whatever else she had to pin on him. There were plenty of times he could have been seen or caught, and with her current record of two for two, he found he should just cut it there before she was having him turn over his wand for inspection and waving his rights to not be force-fed Veritaserum. He had skipped the full extent of a ministry trial before, and he wasn't about to subject himself to one now, on a Saturday night after drinking with this woman.

Except, oddly enough, she wasn't exactly hauling him over the coals, nor did she seem particularly interested in what he had done so much as finding out if her assumptions were correct. Peeking over, she was merely walking with the same idle expression, though perhaps a bit contemplative. What was more, he was left wondering how long exactly she had been attributing these crimes to him. He couldn't see how any of this could possibly have not already been thoroughly discussed with Dumbledore, maybe even thrown together by the man himself; he had never asked Severus to admit to his own crimes, after all. He had always assumed it was because Dumbledore couldn't possibly be any more disappointed in him that he already was, so there was no need to know the details of his spy's personal misdeeds. So if it had been known by both of them the whole time that he had been at the school...

She caught him looking at her out of the corner of his eye and she smiled benignly in that easy-going Freya way, even more so with the look of having had a few drinks. The reflected light from the snow seemed to illuminate her eyes from below, making the soft hazel just barely visible. He stared back, taking in every inch of her face like he was an Auror staring at months' worth of unsolved cases. Her brows raised.

"You're not going to Confund me now, are you?"

He blinked, trying to smooth out whatever had been showing on his face that had apparently looked threatening. "No."

"Oh, thank goodness. Think the firewhisky's doing that for you, I don't want to double up."

He inspected her face again as she let out a quiet laugh and slowly exaggerated the last of her footsteps before they came to a halt. He stopped as well, looking around to take in the gates to the grounds that stood before them. He wasn't sure at first why she had stopped, but when he looked over again to check, she was staring fixedly at him like she wanted to say something but couldn't just yet, and broke her gaze to look down at her shoes. From several feet away, he could just make out her lower lip being pulled into her mouth as she apparently mulled something over. Then her head came up abruptly and she nodded with a jerking motion of her chin, not in the direction of the path straight ahead, but over towards the edge of the forest. "Would you like to go for a walk?"

His eyes stayed on her for a long moment while she tried to offer up her best nonchalant smile, but the corners of her lips kept reworking in a way that she couldn't seem to help, and she failed to hold his gaze for long. He himself gave out after she did, blinking and looking away, feeling like he should be lowering his brows but finding he could only do so by knitting them in bewilderment.

Going over everything he had thought, since earlier at the pub, till just now on the Hogsmeade path, and even back during the whole week since their conversation in the library—all he could think about was what was actually behind her mask, if anything; what she knew about him and his activities; and why it was that she was able to laugh while looking at him like that, and look so betrayed when he rejected her friendship, given all of these things. His thoughts swirled in his brain like so much powdery snow in the wind, while his eyes followed her hand as it came up to tuck her hair behind her ear when it threatened to tumble over her shoulders with her head tilted down, still avoiding his eyes. Perhaps a walk wouldn't be so bad.

"Sure."

Walking the edge of the Forbidden Forest felt like familiar territory, even so late in the night as this. Regardless of his time as a student here, he had already revisited this path in recent months, when he just needed time to himself not working on something or reading. Then again, he never had been by himself, as there had always been a red and gold beacon high in the sky. This was the first time she was actually walking beside him, however, and he felt none of the animosity nor annoyance.

"You're not cold, are you?" she asked, breaking the silence that had settled comfortably in place. Despite her placid grin, her eyes betrayed the mocking intent of her question, and the corners of her mouth tugged wider at his returned glare. "Just checking. Don't want you to freeze."

A healthy amount of annoyance returned.

He felt oddly on edge, similar to the first day he had properly spoken with her; not the one ending in an attack, but the conversation they had had in front of the restricted section of the library. That was the first and last time he had shown an interest in following along with her, with a similar intention of asking questions until something shook loose. After getting to know her, he had no longer felt as curious. She was clammed up about anything that could be deemed noteworthy about phoenixes, the Order, Dumbledore, and herself. He wondered if that would still be as true now.

"Do you ever get cold?" he asked, half rhetorically, hoping to lead into his questions with something benign.

She raised her brows, slowing her pace even more from their already sluggish gait. Raising her eyes to the sky as if considering this for a moment, she finally nodded. "I do... under the right circumstances."

"And those circumstances are...?"

Things weren't off to a good start if she was already grinning at him in that impenetrable way at such a seemingly simple question. He let out a small sigh through his nose.

"Sorry," he said with barbed sarcasm, "I didn't realize it was such a personal question."

"You should definitely try for a less personal one next time."

"And what would a _less_ personal question be?"

"Oh, did you _want_ to ask me personal questions?"

He stared at her in blank exasperation.

She swept an arm out in a grand gesture. "Ask away then. I'm as open a book as one could be."

"What is your exact home address and what enchantments do you have set up to guard it?"

Her arm dropped to her side with a thud, the warmth of her grin fading to a cold pout. "Very funny."

"Just making sure that you aren't too drunk," he said with mock concern.

While he was busy formulating what question to ask next, she surprised him by speaking up first.

"It's an orchard—quite in the middle of nowhere England, so there isn't much point in an address unless you want to send an owl to an empty house."

Whatever he had been going to ask was quickly abandoned. This was definitely not the same as their earlier conversations if she was willing to be revealing something like that, even so vaguely. You just don't give out details of your home in times like these. "You own a whole orchard by yourself?"

She scoffed. "No, no, a muggle family owns it."

He blinked again, more rapidly this time. "You—live with muggles?"

"No, no, _no_. Severus, don't go getting excited; I don't want to do paperwork if you're going to hear the word 'muggle' and lose your head."

"I am not ' _losing my head,_ '" he said with considerable indignation, despite knowing full well she was just teasing him and he shouldn't be getting worked up over it. "I was simply... surprised."

"Right," she said, rolling her eyes.

"How does that... work?" he said, more to get away from her disbelief and keep her answering. "You aren't living in an actual barn, surely?"

She leveled a glare at him. "No. And not a tree, either, before you ask. It's just the upper floor of an old shop they only use during fall."

"And that's... comfortable, is it?"

"Are you implying it's the accommodations or who's providing them that would be uncomfortable?"

He shook his head, looking away, unwilling to get into it about his own personal thoughts at the moment. This was not at all the road he had wanted to go down. He was already getting off track with the surprise that she would even mention her private home. However, this was perhaps an obtrusive reminder of whom she was working for and which side she was meant to be on. Her earlier joking around about his crimes seemed principally off color if she was now right back to trying to guilt him.

"You don't seem particularly upset over them if you're willing to speak to _me_ ," he said with a sneer, leaning into what her image must be of him. "Or are you compromising on your morals?"

She shrugged easily, her shoulders rolling fully back. "Not compromising, no. I don't really think of either of you as very different, to be honest; wizards or muggles." Before he could protest, she continued on. "No offense, but before you speak, I feel the need to remind you that it wasn't muggles who used to hunt my kind for trophies."

"And you think muggles wouldn't do the same if they had even an ounce of knowledge?"

"Oh, I've no doubt they would do the same; some of them at least, same as you lot. And they do have an ounce—phoenixes show up in muggle books as well, you know."

He scoffed. "Just a bunch of made up nonsense."

"Oh?" She let out her own derisive laugh, but it was much more amused. "And your books aren't just spouting off the same fantastical rubbish with no sign of the true picture?" She gestured down to herself with a flourish. "Ahem."

"That's not really our fault if you're determined to be so very secretive now is it?"

She conceded after a moment with a nod. "True enough. I'd much prefer you both be stupid, but if it's just the one, well..."

"You'd rather have a bunch of idiotic friends?"

"Than ones that try to kill or steal from me?" She held his gaze with a sharply pointed smile before it melted away to an imploring look. "What does it seem like to you that I've chosen?"

He took a moment to appraise her, trying to picture her living a peaceful life on a farm with muggles, picking apples or some such. "The suicidal path," he said finally. "Though I guess dying doesn't mean all that much to you."

She squinted at him, her grin souring. "Right... Well... In any case, I'm more interested in muggle culture than living among them myself."

" _Culture?_ " he said with disdain, unable to imagine what muggles could possibly have to offer of interest to a phoenix.

"Their films in particular."

He turned his head fully to stare at her with open incredulity. "You must be joking."

"Am not," she said defensively, as if she were a proud muggle film expert, giving his brows even more height.

"Name one."

" _The Omen_ —that one where they can't figure out for months that the kid is obviously a demon—I would guess some sort of cambion—and they go through the funny series of events that don't work to stop it. Hilarious stuff—it's my favorite."

He shut his eyes and did not open them again until he was safely staring into the snow. If he kept his head craned to the side at her in rapt amazement for any longer, he was going to wake up tomorrow with a crooked neck. But, really, her ridiculousness deserved to be openly stared at and scorned. And her taste in films did, too.

"You know what they say about those who laugh at muggle's pain, don't you?" he said with a weary terseness, as if he barely had the strength to even joke, because nothing could be as comedic as her reality.

"Don't say that!" she protested, putting her foot down especially hard on her next step. "You're lying—none of them were _actually_ hurt, I know because I asked the man at the... the _cinnamon_."

His mouth stretched to a thin line; his eyes unmoving from hers. He gave a tiny shake of his head.

"The... cinna _-ma'am?_ "

He squinted especially hard.

"Well, whatever—the muggle moving picture place—I asked the man working there how they healed themselves from all the injuries, and he said it was just ' _movie magic_.' Movie magic!" She let out a loud laugh that echoed off the trees to their side and out around the grounds. "Can you believe that?"

No, he really could not believe that. He kept his eyes to the ground, watching his footing as he kept his lips pursed tight, exceptionally glad that they were alone, because he didn't think he could handle the embarrassment of being in public for this conversation. He wondered what the usher's face would have looked like, and how concerned Freya must have been by the on-screen violence to ask a muggle stranger such a question. It was a shame he couldn't ask about it. A moment like this where he needed to feign ignorance of every minuscule scrap of muggle knowledge hadn't come up in a long time. No matter how small or benign, it was hard ingrained in him by now to not let on that he had any intimate knowledge of muggles. But the thought of watching her drunkenly take off into a fanatic frenzy if he told her there was a sequel was tempting.

"I really wish I could re-watch it soon. I love how seriously they take themselves, even though it's all just an act," she was musing absently.

"How ironic," he muttered under his breath.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

As they walked further along the tree line, he garnered a few more tidbits about her interest in muggle culture, including bringing up the tiny television he had seen in her office and confirming that she was in fact an absolute nutter that was trying to get it functioning. He had to endure her going on about the logistics of how it worked, which he already knew, but he was trying to keep from 'losing his head' about it by turning it into a game to see just how much she could get wrong. At least she had the excuse of being almost as unfamiliar with muggle things as she had been to wizardkind at some point in her life. He was beginning to take her word seriously that it really was all the same to her.

"How is it," he said, trying to steer the conversation quickly away from even more muggle things, as she had just mentioned something about cars and he was already imagining that she could ramble on for an hour if he let her, "that you can be so... _enthusiastic_ for muggle things, even so far as to like a film with a title like ' _The Omen_ ,' but you won't give dear sweet Trelawney and Powers the time of day?"

Her eyes rolled so hard that her head hung backward, and she said grudgingly to the sky, "Because Divination is a load of shite, that's why."

The corner of his mouth perked up at the earlier memory of Trelawney claiming the ice in Freya's leftover firewhisky glass was a symbol if her melting time on this earth. He was pretty sure the only thing that had been melting was her brain, but he carried on this line. "Hm... I don't know, I found the class enlightening myself."

Her chin came down as her head snapped back upright, gaping at him. " _No. Get out._ You did _not_ take Divination, Severus, I'm not falling for that, even after several drinks."

He stopped holding back his smirk and glanced coolly at her. "Only for one year, but, yes. And now I can say quite certainly that everything out of that woman's mouth is absolute rubbish."

But Freya was now more interested in him than harping on Trelawney. "But... but it's an elective, isn't it? What on earth possessed you to sign up for it?" She was staring at him wild amusement, as if trying to picture his younger self as some poor innocent kid walking unknowingly into a giant waste of his time.

He opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again almost at once, flicking his gaze away. The truth was he hadn't stumbled into the class without prior knowledge that it wasn't going to be good, he had just gone along with it anyway- for the same reason that he knew more about muggle society than even his own household had taught him. There were just some things that were worth knowing so that he could have an excuse to talk to a particular someone.

He shrugged lazily. "I suppose I thought it was worth trying once. And what about you?" he asked, quickly dodging the spotlight. "Dumbledore didn't find Divination important enough to teach you?"

An odd look crossed her face and she looked away much as he had. "Err... Yeah, neither of us thought it would be a good idea."

He squinted at this. "Why not?" It was already apparent that she was going to close up, he just wished she hadn't left it at such a painfully obvious indication that there was something there to cover up. He watched her shrug her shoulders up slowly, her eyes looking all around except at him, and he wished he hadn't used up his one shot at getting her to say something personal on her living arrangements. However, his eyes stayed glued to her, because she still looked like she was struggling to find words, or decide how many to say, and he hadn't given up just yet. When she peeked at him and saw that he was still waiting for an answer, she finally huffed a huge sigh.

"It's... phoenix thing... and..." she mumbled, and he turned his ear towards her.

"What?"

A disgruntled little noise escaped her and she veered on her path, walking closer to his side but carefully not enough that she was touching him. She had to step side to side a few times to get this distance correct, as she seemed to be stumbling over her feet a bit. But she wouldn't even look up.

"It's just that we decided," she said in a quiet still-muddled voice, "that I already had quite enough ability to... see beyond what's there." She finished by making a gesture of setting down a hefty package of knowledge into the air in front of her and then shoving her hands deep into her pockets. He blinked at the side curtain of her hair that was obscuring his view of her face.

Of all the unsettling things he had heard and seen that night, it was this one that suddenly made him feel as if he was standing much too out in the open. His mind ran a spear straight through every single incident from now back to his first day at the school as a teacher, pinning them all together with a red string that spelled out this woman was seeing what he absolutely did not want anyone to see.

"What... do you mean by that?" he asked, failing a little at sounding casual as his lungs forced his breath out. She finally peeked up at him, apparently curious about his expression, but he was holding it perfectly relaxed.

She looked around, seeming a bit at a loss on whether she should be speaking about this. He acknowledged a tiny twinge that he just might be taking on the very unscrupulous role of someone prying a tipsy woman for information while they were alone near midnight next to a forebodingly dark forest, but he shoved it down, contending that he just wanted answers about things that concerned himself. Taking in a deep breath, she appeared to have made up her mind to stumble on through her explanation.

"Well... just like with the Wells incident, right? Just generic phoenix things, like the legends say, I suppose..."

The idea that Freya Fawkes was admitting to a legend in a book being correct about anything was enough to make his heartbeat kick up several notches.

"What legends? Which ones?"

But it appeared as though he had defeated her store of strength for this conversation, because her shoulders suddenly sagged with a long low sigh, and she hung her head.

They both came to a stop, no longer bothering pretending to walk on in the tiny petering steps they had been taking. The lake's edge had taken up the landscape on their other side now, thin hazardous ice seeping out from the muddy bank, giving a shelf to the beautiful untouched snow that then abruptly dropped off into the rest of the water, black and expansive, promising a freezing experience for anyone who might be foolish enough to test the ice.

He was following her gaze out across the still water when he took a steadying breath against his nervous curiosity, giving up on his endeavor. Her face didn't look like that of annoyance that she had figured out why he was pressing so hard on this topic, nor did she seem any bit of the usual icy smiling Freya that would easily block him out. Whatever this was, it actually seemed as if she wanted to tell him on some level, but couldn't figure out how, or wouldn't risk the consequences. An irritating minuscule thorn crept into him, telling him he should be feeling guilty right now. But he still didn't have the full picture, and he wasn't willing to waste time unjustly saddled with this if his perceptions were wrong.

A long, drawn out sigh seethed from just behind him to his side, and he could see the stream of billowing white condensation before he had even turned to look at her conflicted face. She glanced at him, rolling her eyes when he raised his brows.

"Look..."

He looked, not blinking as she neglected to continue her sentence for another moment. She let out another frustrated sigh, running her hand through her hair from temple to ends.

"Look, alright! It's just—... stupid... stupid phoenix things. Even your books pick up on that we show up if there's great enough turmoil in the world. And it's not just that, we can—... I can, with lesser stuff, feel when people around are in pain; that's how I know where to show up where I'm needed of course. But it's more, because there's all kinds of pain, and times like these, there's just... it's a lot, and so" —she waved her hand animatedly in front of her— "so it's just a bloody _lot_ , alright?"

He kept completely still, wearing the same expression as when she had started, though he felt his brows had crept up his forehead considerably. When she finally managed to look at him again, she immediately grimaced and turned fully around on her heel, raking both her hands back through her hair as she teetered dangerously around from the sudden motion.

"So who needs Divination and death omens is my point!" she said over her shoulder, her voice slightly harsher than need be for her joking manner, and he wasn't sure if he should attribute this to the alcohol, or an underlying emotion in her.

The thorn he had felt grew five sizes, and he had to look away from even the back of her head, turning instead to the lake. He didn't need to feel guilty, though; it wasn't as if she was in pain right now, right? And she seemed plenty strong enough to handle it, if she was running around as she always was, smiling and content... Drinking a bit too much, but he had assumed she was just trying to get him to pay up more... Always shut up in the library with just him around... the human equivalent of a desolate mountaintop...

Well, he would want to go live on a mountain, too, if he was magically tethered to take in everyone's problems.

Glancing back her way though, he was sure that he had never once heard her be less than patient to take on someone else's burden. Perhaps she was just a masochist.

He was not really sure if he should be responding as she would, with stifling concern, or not drawing too much attention to the fact that she might be having a less than joyous time, as he would have preferred for himself. This was worlds apart from his area of expertise, and he felt stuck instead on his same track of peppering her with questions, even though at this point it seemed rather rude. He supposed this was to be expected of nosing into someone else's business though. She wasn't just some magical creature in a book with a neatly listed lore, as much as he had hoped for that simplicity; she was a person. And he had just Death-Eater-days-style ransacked through her personal archives and dug up something—well-personal.

"How... do you handle all of that?" he asked in what he hoped was a respectable enough tone.

With her back still turned, all he could see of her quick dry laugh was her shoulders bounce. "Oh, I dunno... Go hole up in my room, pull out the Daily Prophet, cry my eyes out, empty each tear into its own neat little phial, and send it off to St. Mungo's—hoping I'm not letting someone die by trying to pursue something in my life other than sitting beside hospital beds, sobbing over everyone with a gnome bite, and getting practically force fed those awful little biscuits they have."

He stared at her back, feeling as if he was watching a very poorly acted film. It was her usual sarcasm, but with only an ounce of the regular lightness to it, and it didn't carry near as far as she seemed to hope it did in covering up the reality of her words given that her voice was muddled with drink. It wasn't hard to imagine that there was no actual exaggeration to be found. She looked uncomfortable in a way he hadn't seen up close before, only witnessed from afar when her posture would stiffen up in a crowd, and he couldn't fathom what her face would look like. He felt as if he had stumbled over her diary and was accidentally reading entire pages without meaning to, the words jumping out at him. He really wished that he hadn't just watched her drink for hours with a smile plastered to her face, and that he hadn't then immediately decided it would be a great idea to prey on this situation for information for his own good; and also he wished that the lake was positioned just a bit more to the east, so that he could step into it and be swallowed up, and not have to be standing there like a giant mute prick.

It was another long moment before he could think of something to say, and he hoped it would go over as well as he was imagining it, having decided that the only course of action was to continue taking pages out of her book—in the other sense.

"That... must be so hard on you..." He paused for effect, waiting until she was just turning her ear curiously towards him, before dropping the end of his sentence, "organizing all those tiny phials."

Her head turned with a snap the couple more inches needed to cut a sharp look at him, her mouth open indignantly. But he could just see the upturned corner of her lips, and, encouraged enough that he had to force down his own grin to keep up his solemn reverence, he continued, "I can't imagine the cost... of ordering all of them by owl."

She quavered just a second longer before snorting softly and turning her head away, raising her hand over her mouth. "Shut up," she muttered, shaking her head, and he could hear the smile in her voice without having to see it. "Obnoxiously clever git," she added.

"What was that?" he said, taking a step towards her. Playfully reversing the role here with a hammed-up version of the annoying concern she always used to throw at him was actually quite fun. "Please, if there's _anything_ I can do to _help_ -"

"I don't need your _help_ ," she said with a scoff, in what sounded like her mocking imitation of his own voice. But as he took in her face, raising his brows at this, her expression blanched and she turned away. His eyes widened even further. This was _exactly_ a full turnaround, if she was actually so embarrassed as to turn down even his facetiously offered help.

Trying to keep his voice to the same low serious note despite his mischievous glee, he took another step forward. He managed a solid steely expression, just as he reached out to carefully place a hand on her shoulder, hesitating for a fraction of a second, thinking she might just turn around and jinx him for touching her, but it was important for the full effect. He felt her shoulder twitch under his hand, but she merely turned her head to look at it, then peer up at him, catching his stoic demeanor with skepticism.

He stared down at her with grave intensity. "Freya... as Potion's master, I take the handling of all manner of related items very seriously-"

"Oh my effing lord, _shut—up!_ " she exclaimed at her usual full volume, finally breaking down entirely into a fit of laughter, hiding her face in her hands. "You're _such_ an idiot."

With her view obstructed, he fully let loose his self-satisfied grin, feeling like he had succeeded at unlocking the secrets to a particularly complex potion by accomplishing both getting to tease her and winning at cheering her up. He watched her fingertips slide down to massage her cheeks, as if she could force her wide smile physically back in, and he took in every bit of her happily embarrassed face that he could see as if it were a treat. His hand, still on her shoulder, almost moved to sweep her hair aside so he could get a better view, but then it hit him how ridiculous this action would be-and how close he was. His face fell and in a single instant he turned on his heel to look away.

He had gotten so caught up in the act, relieved that the thing she had been so secretive about hadn't been to do with souls or anything else he cared about, and guilted for no good reason besides perhaps a tiny intruding misstep on his part, that he had almost gotten pulled in. He should have never let his hand touch her shoulder, and now the image of her back, with her long hair flowing straight down and just barely flipping up at the ends near her waist, was burned into his mind, making him very aware of why he had felt compelled to reach out in the first place.

_Just a bit too heavy on the wine_ , he told himself, so that his brain wouldn't connect any other meaning to the sound of her light musical laughter playing over in his head, or why it felt so rewarding to tease it out of her.

"You know something?" she said, so close to his back he almost jumped. He turned around again, just to ward off the feeling of being exposed, though when he faced her, he wasn't sure where to look—especially because her eyes were fixed on his with a curious expression that he very much did not like the appearance of. "I think you're a liar."

He frowned, jumping on this thrown out line to keep him from having to think of anything else. Contorting his face into a smooth contemplative mask was a great excuse right now. "In what way?"

She slid her hands back into the pockets of her robes, turning herself just slightly so that the hem swished and spun with her. "I think... in the library... you made all that up about trying to stay ahead of things."

This was just ridiculous, which was great because ridiculous was something he could get into an argument about. "You think so, do you?"

Freya nodded, in a slow knowing motion. "I think... you actually do want to be friends."

"Think whatever you like then," he said plainly. "It won't change anything."

She bit her lip, squinting up at him. "You can't tell me you don't miss your friends," she said, and then added on after his incredulous expression, "at least some of them. Right?"

He looked away, scowling into the woods. Well, he had wished for a distraction. "What does it matter? They're no longer my friends, now, are they?"

"You mean since you ratted on all of them to Albus?"

His head turned back in a slow mechanical motion, the tip of his tongue between his teeth. "Could you... perhaps... _not_ say it like that?"

She blinked innocently up at him, looking like she was hiding a most nonapologetic smile. "Well, how do you think of it then?"

" _Not like that_ ," he said with crisp drawling punctuality. "And if you know the details, then how is it that you're suggesting that I ' _miss_ ' anyone?"

Her brow formed a tiny crease as she looked down thoughtfully. "Well... it makes sense that you would, doesn't it?" When she raised her eyes again, they were shining with perfect sincerity, reminding him of how she was when they had first met, before he had curled his lip at this look enough times for her to finally knock it off—apparently he had undone his work tonight.

He stared down with open hostile frustration as she brightened her smile, searching the very amber of her eyes for how on earth this possibly made sense. Because of course he missed having people around with whom he could talk to without feeling judged and guilted at his every thought, but of course, also, she should not be encouraging something like that—she shouldn't be complacently 'understanding' of any of this. The only reason he could fathom is that she was just egging him on to do her own sort of investigation on him now, trying to catch him sympathizing with the enemy.

He had wanted an exit out of his abrupt over-the-line feelings, but not like this—not just more lines to carefully tiptoe around. Why couldn't she just be one thing or the other so he could make perfect, absolute, unquestioning sense of her? He wanted to just grab her shoulders and make her state clearly for the court just whose side she was on here.

Because he wanted to trust her. He wanted her to be more than whatever she was trained by loyalty to Dumbledore to be. He just couldn't be sure there was any part of 'her' that was real.

With a slow taut pull of her face into a peering squint, she leaned in as if trying to make sure he hadn't displaced his mind to another land entirely. He blinked, looking her over with refocused eyes as she straightened back up with a rejuvenated grin.

"So," she said, all chipper once more, though her voice was kept low as they were so close, and any sound carried clear and far in the wintery scenery, "have you reconsidered?"

He narrowed his eyes, raising his chin to look coldly down at her. "I have no need to reconsider what I already know."

There was a soft crunching as she rocked slowly back and forth on her feet in the packed snow. "Hmm... Sorry, I don't buy that."

He scoffed. "So, what—you think that I'm lying?"

She had to purse her lips hard to keep from laughing, and he saw that her shoulders still shook. When she spoke, it was in a tone similar to the low mischievous one of her earlier teasing, but slowed down. "Well... You are quite the excellent liar, Severus."

He rolled his eyes all the way towards the castle in the distance, wondering if it wasn't about time to start demanding to go back. He was already numbed to the cold, but it would feel good to be getting into bed.

Another sound of snow being stepped on, and his eyes flicked back at the movement, because it had been onto an untouched bit between them as Freya stepped forward. His eyes went from her feet to her face and back again, suddenly very alert, despite that she had stopped there. Her eyes held the same darkly playful stare, but there was something missing- her smile was gone, with only the smallest curl to the corners of her mouth. He watched it slowly open as she prepared to go on.

"You are, though. You lie really well—with your eyes, your face" —he did a thorough internal check that his face was indeed lying perfectly impassive, throwing in an additional unamused frown as well— "and that stupid silver-tongued Slytherin thing that I'll bet you're really proud of." She did smile then, at his deepened scowl at this remark. The sharp corners of her mouth died down however, and her face changed almost completely, softening to another look he hadn't seen from her in a while. His eyes narrowed at this genuine earnest expression, feeling put off by it without the light of day to make her eyes shine in that pure honest golden way. Or perhaps he just needed to be closer to see it. Which might actually happen, as she took another two tiny steps forward, and he suddenly instead wished only that he could escape her gaze, not look more closely at it, though that was all he could do now.

"But, you can't lie..." And then she was doing something that, again, he had not seen in so long, but he recognized immediately, because his heart scrambled in the same way as when she had first raised her finger up to his chest and pointed directly at it. "...with everything."

The muscles in his face itched to purse his lips, clench his jaw, swallow—do something—but he held back. Slowly, with his eyes perfectly as she herself had described, he followed the point of her finger across her hand and to her own eyes, as apathetic as he could. "I don't know what you think you're getting at... but I regret to inform you that I've lied to far more formidable people than yourself. Perhaps it's you that just can't see clearly."

Her hand dropped sluggishly back to her side, her face showing clearly from this close distance her tiny wince. It turned into a skeptical look though, as she tilted her head, not quite fully convinced.

He held her gaze with still composure, just as he had back then, unwilling to back down now that he had something of himself to prove. He was staring almost lazily down into her eyes, letting her go ahead and search his all she wanted—because she wouldn't find any evidence of his strongly beating heart there, even as he could practically hear it in his own ears.

Her lopsided grimace worked its way back into a still somehow hopeful curl, and his own mouth twitched at a sudden movement, making him look down. It was just her hand coming up again, though, and he wasn't about to be-

She caught him off guard, as he had been sure she was just going to do some nonsensical little finger distraction at him again, but instead she had slipped her hand straight through the slit in his cloak, straight back behind him, all the way around so that even when he backed up, it only pulled her with him, both of her arms wrapped tightly into place. Only, this was no place that they should be, hidden under his cloak with his skinny frame, nor was his chest a place that her face should be pressed, and, at current, his lungs didn't seem like a place where air could possibly exist, either.

A shudder passed through him, all the way up his spine, making his shoulders raise and his hands that had come up as if he could have stopped this from happening shake as they hovered in the air.

His mouth had fallen open at some point, and as his body finally could not take being deprived of oxygen any longer, he sucked in a breath, and his brain seemed to take this resource as fuel to go haywire.

This was hardly fair. He had trained his whole life in magic, for defense from magical means—but there was no protection against the steady warmth seeping into his body, straight through his robes, seemingly only cooked up hotter with his cloak covering her whole arms and sides, trapping the heat in. She had stepped right up to him, was pressed right-thoroughly-bloody-effing-incredulously up to him, and he couldn't do a thing about it anymore than he could have stopped the winter from being cold. The winter, just then, was not a cold thing at all, however.

Apparently having not been immediately peeled off him or hexed into a pile of ash had given her reason to think that it was alright to move, because he abruptly felt the further overwhelming sensation of her arms readjusting from just grabbing him in a way to prevent him from moving, and more to almost gently hold him, still with the same solid firmness.

This truly was not fair. Because he was adjusting enough, and his mind was working enough, that he was realizing that this felt far from just warm. This was soft, stabilizing, even comforting. Comforting in an almost painful way; and he remembered a phrase that he couldn't recall where he had first heard, but had always associated with some weak sappy drivel. But he felt it, clear as the cold night air pouring into his lungs. 'Touch starved.' It wasn't anything like he had imagined, or could have ever noticed in himself in day to day, but it was now eating straight through to his very core. Even though his shoulders were hunched as if he could curve his chest inwardly away from her, he still felt like he was standing just as he should—because it was close to leaning down, straight into her, to get the full feeling of every bit of warm contact that he could out of this, so close to being perfect for his arms to reach down and wrap around her as well. He could even see his hands immobile and prepared to do just that. But he couldn't.

He stared in shock down at his hands, knowing that he absolutely should not give in to this idea—because he didn't feel the least bit like someone who could return a feeling such as this. He was not warm, or soft, or inviting. He didn't smell like spiced fruit pie and hot coffee and something else he couldn't quite name. His arms looked like that of a recluse—a true recluse, a spider—poised to swiftly launch out and grab its prey, and hopefully never let it go. He couldn't possibly move—because he couldn't be sure at all that he wouldn't make a fool of himself clinging so tightly that he'd never be able to look her in the face again.

Before he could even go back on his internal struggle, he realized that a horrible thing was taking place- in that the arms around his back were loosening, and his chest was suddenly being exposed to the harsh freezing air.

By the time she was standing back from him, at just enough of a respectable distance to look up at his face but no longer touching him even the slightest bit, all that she had to gaze upon was his impassive mask, his eyes looking straight through her. This was more because he did not think that he could say what he needed to if he dared look her directly in the eye.

"Are you finished?" he said, in a low dull voice that he could pass off as tiredly annoyed if he had to.

But her eyes were peering into his, not with the intensity that he had expected, but a soft and quiet expectancy. Her lips pulled into a slow knowing smile.

" _Liar._ "

He blinked lazily, finally letting his eyes focus on hers. His expression remained immaculate.

He was a liar. A perfectly conditioned, especially trained, honed to a fine point—liar. And in that moment, he truly wished that he wasn't; and that she would smack the lie right off his face, make his eyes stop trying so hard to be cold, and force his mouth to firmly, without even room for an omission of truth, shut up at last.

And he found, as his stomach flipped over at the tiny yet recognizable change in her eyes, that he was a better liar than even he had thought—because he held unquestionably still even as she retraced one of her steps back towards him. Though, perhaps if he was truly a liar, he might run away, not rigidly hold his place as she got near enough that he had to tilt his head down, just slightly, to look at her.

He still upheld his deceptive arrogantly raised chin, even as she tentatively raised her hands to his chest. She stopped there, appearing just as uncertain as he felt underneath it all, as if she wasn't sure she was allowed to touch him. Typical nonsensical Freya rules—invade his space one moment, and then act like she had suddenly remembered boundaries existed the next—right when he was silently begging her to forget them.

She was looking from his chest and back up to him, and he finally had to make a dent in his expression to frown in confusion. Looking up at him almost apologetically, she lightly touched the folded edge of his robes—and then gripped them and pulled him down to just above her eye level, rendering his whole entire façade quite utterly nonexistent as he was abruptly placed barely a hand away from her face. Thankfully she looked just as shocked as he did, as if she couldn't believe she had done this, and he wanted to scream that this was quite literally all being done by her hand alone so how dare she look so naively innocent. Nothing could have come from his mouth with his tongue so glued to the roof of it, though.

With sheepish excitement plainly on her face, he watched her mouth curling into a hesitant grin that she was trying without success to bite back, and then he quickly darted his eyes away in irritation at the memory of all the times he had guiltily watched her do this at a much further distance. He kept his eyes down, his lashes thankfully obscuring her eyes from view so that he could have just a tiny last bit of privacy left in this world. His robes were being gently tugged forward, and he had to close his eyes anyway.

However, he didn't want to fully, and he kept the snowy ground in view for as long as he could, staring, in and out of focus as their breath mixed together in opaque white, at the toes of her boots just in line with his, feeling as if there was somehow, someway, still time to move them and make a run for it.

He closed his eyes with finality and let his face be led to wherever was the perfect height and placement for her, feeling his throat give up as he was let off the hook of anything visual, trying to swallow down his nerves.

There could have perhaps been a cozy fire radiating somewhere a foot or more before him, if it weren't for the way the sound of quiet breathing was kept closely penned in from the vast outdoors all around, making the world suddenly seem small, simplistic, and with slightly less air than he was accustomed to. He held perfectly still, and waited.

The second dragged on longer than he had expected, and soon even the gentle breath brushing his cheeks seemed to fade, so that everything in the world went quiet, blanketed in snow and a tantalizingly close warmth that he couldn't quite feel just yet.

More time passed, and he started to immediately panic, thinking he was either just being messed with, or something was wrong. But he could feel the fabric of his robes still held tight, and she was definitely still exactly where he was imagining her, just not the next bit of where he was imagining her. His breath hitched as he thought he realized what was happening.

They seemed to be communicating just in breaths, because he heard hers rise in response, and he was sure then that he was correct. She was holding completely still—waiting for him. His brow knit in aggravation, because he had not signed up for this.

This was so just like her—some stupid idiotic test, just like she was always doing to him. This could very well be just one big joke to her, and if he made a move, she would just back right up twenty feet away, wiping her precious little pure and goodly mouth and laughing at him.

It could be that she was just testing his own purity, to see if he would dare approach her, when he was meant to perhaps just say no to drunken kisses in the woods at midnight.

Maybe... maybe this was an even more elaborate trick, to lure him in... gain his trust... and then—

He leaned forward the inch that was needed, feeling soft, warm lips give under his gentle touch.

And then his spine fully melted, and he let out the last of the air from his lungs in an anguished pant, finally doing what he couldn't a moment ago and grabbing her fully in his arms as his brain switched blissfully off.

The little noise of surprise she made as his mouth pressed down hard over hers was barely registered, as all he existed to focus on now was the wondrously hot cushiony feeling. His lips parted automatically, starving with each frantic kiss to feel as much as possible, like he might die of cold at any moment and this was the only source of heat left in the world. A delicious smooth heat, just hotter than his own mouth, breathing warmth into him that only made his grip around the similarly warm body in his arms strengthen. Everything was exquisitely warm, even her hair, as his hand slid up her back underneath it, and he distantly heard, though it was delivered straight into his mouth, another small startled noise.

His mouth stopped moving on his next kiss, sighing irritably through his nose at the sound. Instead of continuing another working of his lips over hers, he tilted his head fully to one side, ducking away from her mouth and to her neck, where he met his hand just as his fingertips slipped into the base of her hair. This only caused more breathless sounds to come from her, though, and he huffed a quickened breath of his own out onto the smooth exposed skin. She shuddered in his arms.

With a painful bitter smile, he cracked open his eyes just enough to see the auburn hair all around him, wishing she would stop making so much noise so that he didn't have to be so painfully aware of who she was, and who she wasn't.

Squeezing his eyes tight, he held his lungs still, gently brushing just his fingers through her hair as his lips made contact with her neck and she seized up so much that he felt her shoulder raise into the back of his head. The corners of his mouth curled, feeling wickedly rewarded. He pressed a few more kisses into place, trying to ignore, but also enjoying, that he could hear the tiny sounds just above his ear. She practically pulled his whole face into her neck when he dared lightly poking out his tongue. He was pretty sure she had heard or felt his silent laughter at her reaction, because she drew in a deep steadying breath and sighed most disgruntledly.

It was hard not to laugh, though, when getting such a treat that he did not deserve. He was an unscrupulous bandit that just wanted to tease her and listen to the sound of her voice—only, it was hard not to realize to whom the voice belonged, and why it was so fun to mess with her. As he left her neck alone, making his way slowly back to her mouth, his grin wavered to a frown, but he ignored it, leaning back into her lips that felt softer than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams.

But this was not a dream, and he certainly really, truly was kissing somebody. His frown deepened, and he tried desperately to focus on just her mouth, even chancing sliding his tongue out to get a taste of her lower lip. The flavor was of firewhisky, however, and he knew perfectly well why. But he couldn't let this go just yet; wouldn't let his mind start reeling with unnecessary inconsequential things. He didn't want a reason to feel guilty for the way he could feel the hands gripping his robes trembling against him, or to feel embarrassed for the way it was so apparent in his hungrily moving mouth that he was hopelessly desperate for more than he could even think. He just wanted to keep his arms locked tight in place, to gently switch between brushing just the surface of his lips against hers, to pressing down as hard as he could until their heads both turned to accommodate this tightly locked kiss. He wanted, more than anything, to hear her laugh right into him, in that musical way that always sounded just out of reach, but now would have been close enough for him to hear every differing note. He wanted-if he ever so slowly lightened each kiss until they were barely touching as he did now-her to be the one to lean forward and pull him back in. Only he couldn't seem to pull his lips away long enough to let her even try. And when he finally did, all that he could focus on was the sudden urge to use this tiny gap to whisper her name.

With his pulse hotly beating, a steady kicked-up buzz of wine that he didn't realize was still lying dormant was delivered to every part of his body, and he slowly pulled back, a creeping feeling of total defeat and dread sinking into his shoulders. His eyes blinked and looked up as he gained more room to see, and he didn't need to say her name any longer, because it was jumping out from the box that he had trapped it in, where it had beat like his heart the whole time, trying to be let out.

He gazed down at Freya's face as the panic was leaping through his chest, taking in her lips that were rubbed red from where he had kissed her perhaps much too feverishly, and her eyes, still especially foggy and half-lidded, like she was finding it harder to wake herself up from this than he was. His eyes were already wide and stricken by the time she caught up, and then she, too, looked shocked, though her expression still seemed rather dazed.

" _Oh... shit_ ," she breathed out.

_My thoughts exactly,_ he thought, but couldn't say out loud.

She took in a deep slow breath that made her body inflate so much, he could feel it against him. He quickly tore his eyes away, blinking rapidly and stumbling back to hold her at arm's length. He didn't want to be holding her shoulders much either, but as her hands were still bound to his robes, there wasn't much use of fully letting go. The cold air wrapped around him like a douse of water, feeling bleak and severe after so much warmth. He definitely didn't need to be thinking about warmth right now, though.

"I'm-" he started, but his voice was breathless, and he had to remind himself to breathe, even though there was no more preciously sweet hot air to take in, only the bracing chill that filled his lungs and had him snapping out of his fuzzy feelings right quick. "I'm-I'm sorry," he finally got out, staring at the ground and feeling rather exceptionally stupid for apologizing after the fact. Freya didn't seem to be paying him much attention, however, and when he peeked his head up, all he got in response was a view of the top of her head as she swayed straight back into him.

He caught her in surprise, blinking as his hands landed back around her waist, quickly reworking this positioning to her arms. "Uhm—" But before he could even question this, he felt her weight sliding down his chest, and he suddenly had to fully grab onto her to keep her upright.

_Oh, no._

But even as he realized what was happening, mentally cursing himself out for being so stupid, there was no possible way for him to handle her. He felt the heat rising beneath his hands, and pulled away at the last minute against his instinct to catch her—for, with a crack of flame, she landed in the snow, quite literally spread eagle, as a beautiful but very drunken phoenix.

* * *

_—***—_


	7. Line of Fire

_—***—_

* * *

He stared down at the red and gold bird, his breath mixing into the air, one sigh after another, as he stood stock still between lake and forest.

_Great. Just great. Wonderful, even._

He lifted his black eyes, feeling dull and suddenly exhausted, towards the castle, following the long winding trek—then back at the bird. He gently nudged her with the toe of his boot. She didn't move.

The air angrily billowed out of him in one long swirling white stream. The only reason he wasn't currently panicking was the fact that he could clearly see her chest rise and fall, so he knew she was at the very least perfectly alive—just perhaps with more alcohol than should be in one so small.

Freya wasn't exactly as small as this, though, and even as he was trying to work out what the conversion rate of alcohol to body mass in shapeshifters could possibly be, the much more realistic probability rose in his mind. Like him, she had felt the full effect of her drinks hit her after doing much more heart-racing activity than they had been doing on their slow walk out to this point, and it had all caught up to her a lot stronger than it had him. He snorted softly. See her try to make fun of him for only having two cups after this.

The thought of 'after,' however, particularly having to engage with her fully sober, not shrouded in the odd fantastical energy of nighttime, but perhaps in broad daylight, was not a very comforting thought. Perhaps he could just stand out here in the snow the whole rest of the night, drawing out the time he had before he would have to catch up with reality. Perhaps till a nice springtime thaw.

Currently reality seemed to be playing some absurd cruel game, because he had just partaken in a drunken snog with a woman whom was bonded friends with the man that employed him, and was already not very happy with him at the moment. And now the woman was in the shape of a particularly striking looking swan-sized bird, which was possibly the most sobering cold bucket of water.

His eyes were stuck in a wide unfocused stare as the gravity of the situation settled into his mind, not sure which of these equally weighty parts he was having the most difficulty adjusting to. As he absently worried his lower lip in his thinking, realizing with a tiny jolt that it tasted most unfamiliarly and causing him to swiftly wipe his mouth, he thought there might be a distinct contender for first place. He self-consciously gave his whole face a thorough rub as well, finding that his overly warm palms matched his cheeks under the thin outer layer of cold.

He let out another sigh and looked back down. He was going to have to cart her back to the castle here at some point, he was just mustering up the willpower to do so. The feeling that he was participating in some sort of muck-up night ( _'Steal around in the middle of the night with the headmaster's prized bird!'_ ) was giving him much trepidation, though. It shouldn't be so bad once he was through the entrance hall and up the stairs; there were plenty of hidden passageways, and the castle should be mostly deserted by this hour. The other glaring problem, then, was that he would have to actually touch her.

_It isn't weird_ , he told himself, kneeling down with an uncomfortable grimace. _Just... doing what's necessary_. He still couldn't get the mental image of some sort of hunter collecting the animal he had just killed out of his head though, and the fact that it had been 'kissed' (while drunk) not 'killed,' was not exactly comforting. Almost to soothe his own conscious as much as to test the waters of this interaction, he changed his mind at the last minute of scooping her up with both arms, and instead flipped one hand over to gently smooth down her back.

And then he was gripping his opposite hand because it had just received a very sharp reminder that this was most definitely not a pet, despite the fact that he would absolutely be arguing with her later that whatever claims she made of having the same mind in both forms, he had never seen her try to bite anyone in her human one.

" _Fine, carry your own self then!_ " he hissed angrily, but the bird only stirred with a soft coo, her head where it had reached out to nip at him going limp once more.

Aggrieved, shaking off his one hand which was at least not bleeding, he fumbled for his wand in the other and aimed it at her; but as he had suspected from the beginning, of course the levitation spell did not work. Irritated past the point of caring any longer, he wrapped his hands into his cloak and unceremoniously bundled the whole troublesome phoenix up into a half-swaddled lumpy heap. With no more painful protests, it was like this that he carried her all the way back up to the castle, burdened by his own personal sun against the cold.

At the top of a secluded staircase to the second floor, he had to finally come to a halt in the middle of a silent hallway of classrooms, standing just outside the reach of a beam of faint moonlight from a nearby window. There was a problem of not knowing if her office door would be openable without her set of keys, which he assumed were currently trapped in the limbo plane of whatever enchantment was on her clothing. Leaving her under the archway of the door didn't seem like a very splendid idea, and taking her straight to Dumbledore's office, while it had its merits, was possibly the least enticing idea yet; not only because of the threat of the headmaster himself, but because it was not quite as late as he had assumed, and there were plenty more opportunities to be caught if he went on for several more floors.

"Severus? What are you doing?"

Or, he could simply be caught outright, and be saved the trouble of figuring out what to do.

He slowly turned a fraction towards the other end of the hallway, where Professor McGonagall was coming towards him from the main stairway, fully garbed for the day as if she had still been attending to something this late.

"What's that you've got there?" she said when he didn't answer her first inquiry, scrutinizing the awkward bundle in his arms as she came closer.

He opened his mouth to reply, but his brain seemed preoccupied with trying to dissolve the guilty look of surprise off his face before he could think of something. He supposed there was only one viable option. "Ah... I was dealing with this," he said, and turned fully as he let the folds of black cloak fall away and held the phoenix out with reproach- and notably away from his body. "But perhaps you would be more—"

"Good heavens! Just what have you done to her?"

His mouth remained open as he blinked, his face falling to an indignant scowl. "I—didn't do anything—I just found her like this, and I was—"

"Found her where? Have you been outside the castle?"

He followed McGonagall's sharp eyes to his boots, spotted with slushy snow mostly melted into droplets and making his soles squeak on the polished marble floor.

"I was—simply trying to return her to—"

" _Unbelievable!_ Don't know what on earth you were thinking, just—Give her here at once!"

His tongue scraped against his teeth with unspoken excuses that were evidently pointless. " _Glad to._ I wasn't out looking for the hassle."

McGonagall shot him her sharpest glare as the phoenix was handed off, and he had the distinct feeling, not for the first time, that she didn't much think of him as more than a student. But as she fumbled to take the bird into her own hands, they both were startled by a flapping of wings, as the phoenix shifted right back into Severus's arms, making him have to catch her as she wedged herself against him. He stood frozen, eyes slowly looking back up to take in a much more fed-up McGonagall.

"I said, _give her here!_ "

"I—am— _trying_ —" He all but tossed the bird underhanded, but the flapping was so disruptive, in a scramble of hands, neither of them caught her this time. He had a brief moment of déjà vu as she fell to the ground, only in reverse, as this time, with a snap of flame that cut through the hall, Freya stumbled out to catch herself on her own two human feet.

Or, mostly so, as the woman wobbled around at such a precarious teeter, McGonagall grabbed her by the elbow in a tight grip. She drew Freya in, and with a sharp sniff that made Severus bite down on his tongue in realization of what would come from this, she held the phoenix woman steady at arm's length.

"'Lo, Minerva," Freya said with the air of a mouse that had just been caught by a particularly astute cat.

" _Have you been drinking?_ "

Freya shook her head and then blinked in confusion, rather disorientated by her own hasty motion after being nearly dropped to the ground.

A penetrating look was turned on him now. " _And you, Severus?_ "

He shook his head with much more steadiness, but was apparently just as unconvincing with his tongue so glued to the roof of his mouth. He imagined his title of ' _Britain's greatest liar_ ' slipping down several rungs after tonight. If only McGonagall had been trying to kill him, perhaps he could have summoned a better display than looking as guilty as if he had still been a student, out drinking underage.

" _Positively unimaginable!_ You are _professors!_ " She rounded on Freya specifically, who was already hanging her head, looking either thoroughly shamed or still dizzy. "Just what do you think you're doing—getting yourself drunk? With _him_?" Severus drew himself back, his face going hard in defense, but he didn't dare interrupt. "And what do you suppose the headmaster will have to say?" Both of them dropped their jaws at this, but it was Freya's question to answer.

"What does Albus have to do with it? I didn't-" She looked in horror from McGonagall to him, making him dart his eyes away, and back. "We didn't do anything—wrong! Teachers drink all the time."

" _You_ ," McGonagall pointed a finger barbed with responsibility at her, "are more than a teacher. And you should very well know better than this."

Freya seemed to diminish under this hefty weight, her shoulders slowly going slack. She had gone red in embarrassment, and he felt his own sense of security that they hadn't done anything worthy of this treatment falter at the look on her face.

McGonagall gave a great huff at their awkward silence. "Oh, for goodness' sake—get to bed, the both of you!" It was as close as " _Get back to your dormitories!_ " as he could imagine from her, but he didn't have a mind to raise offense at the moment.

McGonagall stood like an angry cat between the two of them as they had to dance around her to opposite sides to the right paths towards their respective quarters, and neither of them dared so much as glance at each other again.

His head hit the pillow with more force than just from weariness, as the sound of bedsheets being savagely yanked around made an unsatisfyingly soft fluffy noise in the dark of his room.

How was it that he kept getting blamed for things that were her fault in the first place? Though at that moment he felt more inclined to rally together with her to have a relieving round of mocking the deputy headmistress for this indignity to both of them. At least this time Freya had been included in the category of 'too old to outright punish, but apparently too young to deserve the respect of fully functioning, fully employed just as the rest, adult professors of this school.' In fact, he could not remember ever before seeing Freya receive a scolding like that. Was it really so bad if they were out drinking together as friends? ('Friends' was suddenly sounding a great deal more manageable in comparison to whatever McGonagall had been interpreting—or whatever else could be interpreted after tonight. _Just friends_.)

As his mind lingered on the image of Freya's expression from several floors above, shame-faced and head hanging, he wondered, more than what she would have to say in private about McGonagall's outlandish reactions, what she could have been thinking in that particular moment. The image shifted to a different angle of Freya's face, straight on and much more close, with a similar but vastly different flush of color to her cheeks.

The last of his irritation subsided with a quiet release of breath as he lay on his side, staring into the darkness. The thumb of his hand tucked under the pillow at his chin came up to trace his lower lip. If he sucked his lip in, he could still pick up the taste, with just the tiniest hint of firewhisky.

He turned McGonagall's words that had been meant for Freya onto himself. Perhaps _he_ should have been the one to know better. Because, as he lay there getting hardly any sleep that night, he felt more guilty, in such a twisted way, than he could possibly begin to sort out.

This feeling didn't just persist the next day, but mutated and grew into a multi-headed dragon, complete with poisonous fangs, and some sort of breath that was not fire because he had come to associate it closely with what he was trying so hard not to think of.

Severus swallowed again, for perhaps the eighth time, as he stood at the top of the landing, staring down at the bronze eyes of the griffin door knocker to the headmaster's office, with all the feeling that he could have been stepping into the ministry for a trial. His stomach hadn't unknotted since the knock had come at his office door that morning before he had even fully woken up.

At first, as he had leapt out of bed feeling completely disorientated on little sleep, he had thought it would have undoubtedly been Freya, and this had caused considerable alarm to his muddled mind. Then, that it would have been McGonagall, coming to have her own dedicated session of reprimanding on him. But, when he had finally opened the door, it had been merely a single solitary letter, looking crumpled after bashing its enchanted self into the wood so many times while he had stood there caught up in his sleepy worries, and bearing the seal of Dumbledore—which had sent his panic into a state where he had been seriously considering taking an unannounced early holiday to Siberia.

His hand raised to open the second door he had stood too long in front of that morning, but it hesitated before touching the knocker. There was only a very slim chance McGonagall hadn't told the headmaster everything from last night. The only hope he had at this point was, oddly enough, if Freya had gotten a chance to do what he usually held her in contempt for, and had told the headmaster her own version of events, with considerably more defensiveness. That is, if she still was defensive, and hadn't had the night to sober up and change her mind... And, indeed, if her mind even needed changing, and hadn't been against him since the moment she had shifted back in the hallway... Or, from the moment he had grabbed her without warning...

As he stared at his hand over the knocker, with the desire to take in the vast landscape of Siberia swiftly rising to the point that he was mentally checking his bank account, he thought frantically that this really wasn't the reason he had always assumed Dumbledore would be sending him to Azkaban. But if he had to go out now, at least if a dementor sucked the soul out of him, perhaps he would stop needlessly angsting so much about whatever some woman thought of him.

"Come in, Severus."

He nearly jumped out of his skin as the disembodied voice echoed around the small landing, looking around for its source, and for where the headmaster had been able to see him from. Hopefully he hadn't just watched him stood there the whole time attempting unsuccessfully to take back full control of his face and mind for far too long.

Taking one last breath to clear his thoughts, imagining it was ice cold night air and he was plunging his heart into the frigid lake to wrest control of it, he pulled the door open and slipped inside at last.

"You wanted to see me, headmaster?"

Dumbledore inclined his head to look through his spectacles at him as he came to stand in the center of the room. He remembered a time when Freya had denied his assumption that the man was perhaps like a father to her; say whatever she like, he felt like he was being inspected by one.

"Yes..." Dumbledore paused for a moment to let his hard stare linger, before seeming to relax just slightly. "Thank you for coming so early in the morning, Severus. I had thought we might get an immediate start to what I called you in here to discuss; it being, most opportunely, the very start of the week."

He didn't feel very assured that the opportune timing was just a matter of the day, but the headmaster went on.

"It would appear that your learning period with Freya has gone well, yes?" Severus had to forcibly keep his eyebrows from raising to his hairline, and mentally kicked his thoughts of last night far into the weeds of his brain as he tried to remain neutral and listen. "And, I presume, the weeks' worth of detentions with Mr. Wells have gone just as well?"

"Of course, headmaster," he said casually, happy to have something completely normal to discuss. "The boy has been accepting the gravity of his actions at the quidditch match."

"Good to hear. I am glad that things worked out so neatly then, before Freya had to take her leave."

Having been concentrating on staring just to the side of the headmaster's face so hard that he nearly missed what he said at first, Severus only now took in the headmaster's blue eyes as his attention snapped into place. His head slowly turned questioningly to one side. "Her... leave?"

Dumbledore stared at him with such a calm unmoving gaze, Severus finally had to feign looking away in mild thought to escape it. His wizened voice spoke up again. "Yes. She will most unfortunately be absent for much of the month. However, we have an esteemed guest visiting to cover her class till the start of the holidays."

When he had heard her first say she had plans during Christmas, he hadn't been thinking she would have meant the whole month. And if she was actually getting a substitute this time instead of working on a sleep deprived schedule of classes and absences from meals, she must really be leaving, not just on nightly missions. What on earth could she be doing—spending Christmas on top of a mountain? And, more importantly, did that mean last night had been like a sendoff?

He didn't exactly have much he could comment about out loud, and, eventually, after he gave a vague nod of acknowledgement at this information while dodging the silent stare being leveled at him, Dumbledore went on.

"So then... Back to my reason for calling you in here," he said slowly, steepling his hands over his desk and making Severus's stomach flip over.

Just because the only mention of Freya so far had been innocuous didn't mean he was free yet—in fact, he thought, she could very well be the one taking an early holiday to Siberia due to embarrassment—right after telling the headmaster about last night. He cut through this thought just as quickly as it had manifested, forcing his mind to settle back to its blank slate.

"I realize that perhaps I have been a bit... hands-off during your introduction to the year so far. But after last month, I think it is apparent that either you will show up in my office of your own accord, or else end up here under most unfortunate circumstances if things were to continue... That is why, starting this week, I would like for us to have scheduled meetings. Every Sunday—any time of the day will do, I suppose—to go over exactly how things are faring."

The low light of the wintery morning shown through the windows of the high tower in such a way that the blue eyes fixed to him looked more intimidating than the calm face seemed to profess. Severus kept his own expression steady as he took in this information, feeling a growing sense of foreboding as the pieces of this statement clicked into place in time with the chiming of many delicate metal instruments strewn throughout the office.

When he had at last been released, following more details of his new instructions, and made his way passed the stone gargoyle out into the hallway, he finally let his mind race freely.

Freya was gone, which meant that she could no longer watch over him. Last time the headmaster and his pet had tried this, things hadn't gone so well. This time, then, Dumbledore was lowering himself to the task of keeping his own eye directly on things.

It didn't sit well with him—it certainly didn't agree much with his already anxious stomach—but it must be the truth of the matter. A weary sigh escaped him as he meandered his way towards the main stairs, more focused on his thoughts than making it down to breakfast. It hardly seemed like a worthy cause for upset at this point; whether or not she was a spy. He was already so conflicted with everything else.

An anomaly. That's what he had decided upon while lying in bed. Just a fluke of events; like a warm day in winter, or a snowstorm in late spring. He had almost been able to convince himself he had merely slipped and fallen lips first, and the whole thing had been an accident. It helped to quell some of his guilt, and made major improvements to one particular thorn—that which felt as if, absurdly, he had betrayed something. There was nothing for him to betray, however, and he couldn't stomach pulling at the rest of that thread of thought. Not anytime soon, at least.

That left him with only one course of action, and that was to grimace as if in pain every time he pictured the events of last night and block them out. Slughorn's party had been bad enough for giving him sporadic bouts of squeezing his eyes shut against the physical embarrassment of his actions, particularly those that happened in front of Freya; this was just different in that it wasn't anger that he was feeling, but something much more complex.

With his thoughts too much of a mess for him to want to leave the solitude of the lonely hall just yet, he had slowed to a standstill around the shadowed corner just before the main platform that would take him down, in front of a painting of some sort of battle taking place on dragonback. It was perhaps not the most advisable place to stand for privacy, as someone nearly ran right into him rounding the corner.

"Oh—sorry—"

Quite entirely forgetting his reflex to control his face, it went straight into a look of shock that was being mirrored by Freya's before him. Her silently bobbing jaw finally clamped up just as his brows were beginning to come back down in a knot, and, with a much higher pitched apology, she backed straight up, glancing wildly to the sides before disappearing right back the way she had come from. He stared open-mouthed at the now once more empty spot of hallway.

So much for last night having been her send-off. She was, apparently, very much still physically present.

As his astonishment wore off, his hand suddenly darted to his face so fast he practically slapped it, fully wiping down his cheeks and mouth and wishing she hadn't left him with yet another image of her blushing face that he didn't know what to do with burned into his mind.

Thankfully, at least, this was the last sighting of so much as a single auburn hair of her for the rest of the day, and by the end of it, he finally let himself settle into the fact that she was hopefully now really gone to whatever snowy adventure awaited.

Less positively, he now had endless unimpeded time to wonder just how much she regretted that night; and just how much she must hate his guts for daring to touch her; and what sort of revenge she was plotting for having done it while she was impaired. He still felt like he had dodged an entire second war after escaping from Dumbledore's office without so much as a veiled dropping of a hint, or a not-so-veiled threat. In any case, he needed to find something to occupy himself with besides standing around at random places in the dungeon, staring off into space and making the Slytherins start giving him questioning looks. They were so far not enjoying the extra time their Head of House had to spend while he was avoiding the libraries and prone to seemingly most unpredictable mood swings.

As Monday came, he found himself wondering if he shouldn't go back to skipping meals in the Great Hall for the umpteenth time that year, because the substitute for Freya turned out to be none other than an assigned ministry official, looking rather pained to be wasting his two weeks before holiday going over a scroll of instructions about as long as the staff table itself. Apparently Freya had been very thorough with her lesson plans. Amidst the combination that was this man dropping questions like he might be a plant to sniff around Hogwarts with particular interest in the very man (acquitted man, assuredly) who was now his neighbor at the table; McGonagall shooting dirty looks at him; and Dumbledore, sitting on her side and looking as if oblivious to the happenings around him, despite being fully well responsible for all of them as far as Severus was concerned, he had finished up his meal without the stomach for more than half a plate that day.

By Tuesday he found a worthy distraction, while discretely smuggling some dinner down to his office, in the form of one other who was skipping out on the above mealtime gathering.

Without causing much more of a fuss than a slowly raised eyebrow at Wells' appearance of a fellow food thief, he settled them both into his office, with a conjured table in front of the usual fireplace sitting area, so Wells could eat in peace, while he risked the crumbs on his own desk.

After finishing his carefully sliced dinner rolls, and after Wells had finally stopped trying to make excuses for his lonesome eating arrangements, swearing up and down that he hadn't snuck into the kitchens or bothered any of the elves, who he seemed to somehow know the exact location of despite his refuting, they had finally settled into a quiet that was broken only by the fireplace providing the only light in the small room. He didn't imagine a student would very much enjoy having dinner with their professor, and he did indeed look more like he was being confined despite the fact that he had willingly followed Severus in at the offer, but the glum way Wells was poking at his pilfered pumpkin cakes looked to have a bit of a difference source. Perhaps wherever it was that his unfocused glare was looking to.

Taking a sip from his goblet and clearing his throat, Severus decided to speak up.

"Might I ask... why it is that you're not at dinner with your friends?"

If he was looking for conversation, Wells apparently was not in any mood, as his only response was to shrug without even looking up from his plate. Severus continued to eye him with scrutiny.

"I see... Perhaps your friends are good enough for you to copy an essay on Everlasting Elixirs from, but not to share a meal with?"

This finally got Wells to look up, but it was not with any pleasure. He seemed to consider defending himself for a moment, and then the light of argument left his face. "What are you going to do, give me more detentions? _Sir?_ "

This was in line with the snippy attitude the boy had taken with him ever since he had gotten a much unaccustomed reprimanding while they had been in the presence of the deputy headmistress after the quidditch match. He supposed it was his own fault for being so soft on him up till then, but it was still aggravating.

"No," Severus said with considerable effort to keep his indignation under wraps, "I daresay your difficulties completing your assignments yourself would only worsen if you continue to have less time for them."

"Maybe if you had just defended me in the first place then I would have been able to do it myself," Wells said with a sudden burst of anger, having seemingly found the fight left in him.

Severus held his eyes closed for a second to restrain himself from rising to a yelling match over the already pathetic dining experience.

"I cannot exactly do anything," he said with leveled contempt, "if you go attacking other students in front of the whole _entire school_. Including the headmaster himself." He turned his glower onto Wells, who didn't seem to have a defense for this, and continued. "They heard what you said all the way to the stands, you know."

That sealed the final bit of whatever protests he had left in him, and the boy turned back in his seat to face his pumpkin cakes, picking one apart without eating it. It was a moment before he found anything else to say.

"Why couldn't I have detention with Professor Fawkes again at least?" he said in a mumbling voice, keeping his eyes on his plate. "McGonagall made me do cleaning—and _lines_. All Professor Fawkes ever made me do was water her plants."

"I would go out on a limb," Severus said with dry sarcasm, "and assume that is why you had McGonagall instead." He noted that he himself wasn't included in Wells' list of preferred detention-givers. "Professor Fawkes is taking her holiday early, by the way. So don't be expecting any more leniency from her till after break."

"What—why? Where's she gone so early?"

"Perhaps skiing? I haven't a clue."

Wells was looking more perplexed even than he had when Dumbledore conveyed this news; it was certainly more interest than a student should have for a teacher's absence. Severus narrowed his eyes curiously.

"Was there something you were wanting to speak with her about?" Wells looked around the floor thoughtfully for a moment before shrugging most unhelpfully. Severus persisted with more irritation. "Anything you might need, you can obviously come to me as your Head of House first and-"

"No, thank you."

He drew in a steadying breath as if about to sigh, but let it out smoothly at the last second. It wasn't worth getting worked up over. Wells would come around eventually once he realized his teacher was actually there to help him, it was just that there were obvious rules in place still that needed to be followed. If he was too immature to see that right now, well, so be it.

It was a shame that the boy didn't show signs of having much of anyone to talk to now, though, what with his apparent favorite teacher gone. Severus hoped beyond what he already knew to be true that the boy was at least still trying to maintain contact with his family, so that he could still have some connection there—no matter what news would eventually transpire.

Sitting in his office, eating in the dungeon gloom, just the two of them, had him feeling a kind of somber nostalgia for his own weak familial contact. With the end of the year drawing near, and the dismal year it had been for him, he considered for the briefest of moments escaping from the stressful environment the school had become and taking a real honest attempt at a holiday. It could only be an attempt, however, considering Wells probably had him beat in number of letters exchanged to mothers, and it might end up being an even more taxing experience if he thought too hard about it, but it was an idea, nonetheless. For the time being, he tucked it away in the back of his head for further consideration.

The time he had to put in a notice asking to take off, however, was steadily dwindling away.

The 9th of December came and so did his second Sunday meeting with Dumbledore, where not a single mention of Freya came up to his great surprise and further disquiet. He conveyed that things with Wells had been improving, and the boy was even cheering up as time out of detention went on. Dumbledore had nothing further to contribute this session, and Severus took the opportunity to leave the office as soon as he could, now associating it with so many uncomfortable conversations.

Apart from the headmaster, things were mostly returning to normal. As normal as could be without a particular woman to pester him at all times she was around, or set up camp in his thoughts when she wasn't- now it was just the latter.

Another lasting difference was that he felt oddly cold at times, as if even with a lit fireplace and thick blankets, he just could not absorb enough warmth. The thought had crossed his mind at one point that perhaps there was some additional phoenix magic that had not been recorded in any books—some sort of cursed ' _phoenix's kiss_ ' that had taken hold of him. Well, it sounded appropriate to every other fantastical thing that could be found in books on magical beings, but he didn't exactly believe this absurd fleeting thought. It was just an amalgamation of all the things on his mind melded into one, so that when he was shivering in bed at night or wandering the especially wintery dungeon halls, he could blame the fact his mind kept recalling exceptionally warm thoughts on a magical reason instead of it being his own fault.

And it certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he now had no one to talk to.

His somewhat neutral processing of the information of Freya's departure had been slowly souring as the days went on, feeling more and more as if she could have at least said a goodbye—spy, or pet, or otherwise—it was just polite. He reckoned that it might be just inopportune timing given their last interaction, and her thoroughly embarrassed beyond words display when he had briefly run into her, but still; he wanted _something_ more. A postcard from a lodge covered in more decorations than even the castle was piling up perhaps. Afterall, that was what 'friends' did, didn't they?

The very brilliant idea of the age-old tradition of communication via the exchange of papers, perhaps by some sort of large bird, that was easily accessible if one had a simple quill and ink, had rather been escaping him—mostly due to the fact that this would require the will to do so and it was much easier to wallow than to write. Especially if he had to be the one to do it first. But it did cross his mind.

There wouldn't have been anything to write about, however, as what he wanted couldn't be sent nor received by a letter. He just wished for the seat next to him to not be so resolutely empty no matter how many times he turned his head to look.

At least, the seat in the library, anyway, as he could do with the one beside him at the staff table being empty rather than occupied as it currently was. He had returned to eating meals in the Great Hall, as nothing could pull him from his thoughts much these days anyway, not even the prim ministry man that now always filled in the seat to his left.

He mostly only cast sidelong glances of distaste and kept his chatter towards the deputy headmistress and headmaster, but on the current morning, as Severus took his place at the table, the usual rude stare was followed by turning in his seat with a question.

"Severus, was it?" the man asked with displeasure, as if he was being forced to lower himself in some degree by speaking to him.

Severus busied himself with taking particular care to align the sleeves of his robes out of the way of his knife and fork, only answering with a raise of his brows in acknowledgement and silently praying he could just get through this meal without being interrogated.

"Right," the man said, taking this as enough of an opening, "Minerva was telling me the other day that you happen to be close with Miss Fawkes, yes?"

Again he made no comment, but his eyes slid over to McGonagall who was looking particularly terse over her morning toast. He could just imagine the note of disapproval her voice must have contained as she relayed this information to the substitute, who went on.

"Well, I've been having a bit of trouble accessing her office. One of the students said that she keeps—erm—things that would be useful for class, and, well, I was wondering if you happen to know if she left a key, or perhaps—"

"Sorry," Severus cut in, making the other man go quiet. "Seeing as the only closeness we share is in seating arrangements, I haven't a clue."

"Ah..." The man ran his eyes skeptically over him as Severus already turned back to his plate to begin filling it. "A shame. I would have liked to see what sorts of creatures she keeps. I'm in the Department of Magical Forestry Cultivation myself—wand woods, you know—plenty of nasty little things lurking around magical woods, you wouldn't believe—"

_Fascinating_ , he thought to himself, holding back from rolling his eyes as he completely tuned out the rest of what the man had to say and cut into his breakfast muffin. He was more focused on the fact that someone from the ministry was trying to dig into even the secrets of 'Dumbledore's niece' not two seats away from the man, and that he himself had now covered twice for the woman. With Wells it had just been typical keeping a student out of teachers' affairs, but with this situation he felt as if he were repaying a debt; and as if he had discovered a certain zeal to do so. Not even he had been invited to explore too closely the secrets of Freya's office, and he certainly wasn't going to let some ministry official go snooping either. He might have to set up some kind of watch on the door later...

The Daily Prophet was delivered and snatched up by Severus, more to have something to occupy himself with that would hopefully deter the man more than looking busy over eggs. The man did thankfully go silent as the newsprint was unrolled and straightened out, but it was with such an odd smile on his face that Severus found himself scrutinizing it rather than the paper.

When at last he finally did shift his eyes down to read the headline, the ministry man spoke up once more, but it was not to continue his forced casual ramblings about bowtruckles and wood rot. His voice dropped low from its former hauteur, into a nasty murmur meant only for the staff table, and for one particular individual's ears.

"Ah... Most unfortunate business, isn't it? I heard over the weekend already from a connection..."

Severus could just make out the man's hand on the edge of the table as he leaned in, but while his eyes were wide enough to take in the details around him, they were glued on a fixed track across the words before him. Whatever reaction the ministry official was trying to observe in him was the least of his concern as his head snapped up, his eyes racing across the Slytherin table.

He stood up at once. Let the man think whatever he wanted about him; his past was well behind, and he was now a Head of House first and foremost.

Darting swiftly over, his eyes already casting about for every other paper being unrolled across the hall, the one in particular he was narrowing in on was already being torn from the hands of the fifth-year boy beside his target by a swift flick of his wand, landing in his hand to be shoved with a sharp crinkle into his pocket.

"Mr. Wells. Follow me."

After a hurried pace down to the dungeons, he found himself once again in his office during mealtime with Wells. This time there was no little table in front of his seat by the fire, however, and Severus didn't join him. He stood staring down for a prolonged moment as he watched the knowledge of what was happening grip the boy's face. When he didn't panic, but instead turned to a stony resignation, Severus finally handed over the paper, without a word, and turned on his heel to pace around the room.

Any sympathy he was feeling was washed over with rage, and he clenched his jaw knowing the ministry official just above could have easily prevented causing such a scene if he had just spoken up. But of course, a scene was what he wanted, and there was no care for anyone else who would be affected. Perhaps he even knew the man's son was in the room and had written him off as the same cut as his father. Even more enraging: had Dumbledore himself known?

There was a sharp shaky drawn in breath behind him and he ceased his anxious footsteps. He didn't turn around immediately, but when he recognized the sounds as almost verging on happiness, he did chance a curious peek over his shoulder. Wells was still swiping his sleeve over his face, though, and he kept his attention silent for now, waiting for the boy to speak up first.

"He's—he's not dead," he said with a voice that betrayed his age. "Azkaban—probably for... for, well, a long time—but... he's not dead."

Severus could only stare at his relieved face, his expression accentuating somehow both his boyish youth and the dark circles under his eyes. It was such a far cry from what he was expecting his reaction to be, and he hadn't been sure how to respond to even his expectations, that now he was simply at a loss. The quavering smile in the face of such news struck such a chord in him that he could only quietly turn away again in confusion.

Wells seemed to understand his teacher's reaction, because after a moment he timidly spoke up again.

"I... I used to see him dead, you know. In class, Miss Fawkes brought out a boggart, even though we told her we'd all learned that already ages ago from our last teacher—the one who died from pixies, you know? But she said... she said as we got older, it was important to go back to what we were afraid of; because it would change when we learned more scary stuff. We had to keep growing our defenses as our fears grow..." Wells must have lifted his head, because his voice suddenly came in clearer to Severus's half-turned ear. "I think she just made it up, really, because she probably didn't know we had already learned it. But... but she was really nice when it happened—you know—when my dad... when his dead body fell out, and the whole class was..." There was a sound of gulping down air. "I'm just—I'm really glad he's not dead. And he'll get out eventually, I know it..."

Severus sincerely wished he could bottle just an ounce of the optimism he was hearing, as he was sorely lacking at the moment. He stared in a grim haze at a wall of potions before him, abandoning hope that he could say anything remotely helpful in this situation. His eyes cast over the labels of every jar as if searching for one that might spell out the name of a particular brand of helpfulness, the only kind he could think of at the moment: Freya. But she was nowhere to be found, and he needed to get a grip on more than just his wrist that was being held tight behind his back. Before he could come up with something worth saying, however, Wells spoke up again.

"Sir?"

Severus steeled himself and turned with a readiness for compassion that he did not possess.

"Do you know that you're in this article, too?"

He felt his face go smooth and slack; and then numb.

"What?" He rushed forward and took the out held paper, the second page where Wells had turned it to coming into focus with too many words for his eyes to grab all at once, though they tried. He turned away in a swish of robes from the boy's curious expression, and narrowed his search for his own name.

_"...in fact, Aiden Plewick, also arrested in the same group as Tobias Wells, was a mere nineteen years of age according to records available to the public. It isn't unusual for Death Eaters to fall into such an age range, though. Many go Dark nowadays at an alarmingly young age, no doubt due to their vulnerable minds being more easily corruptible. It has even been speculated that some had dropped out of schooling at the famous Hogwarts to pursue such nefarious goals, as multiple persons currently either in Azkaban or at large had come straight from the thought-to-be very esteemed castle. Though it could even be the school itself encouraging these ideas, as at current the staff contains none other than one such youthful Death Eater, Severus Snape, who has been hired to teach Potions, The Prophet has been told, and whose name was also brought up in the trial."_

_Acquitted! At my_ own _trial—which was not public record!_ He realized the muscles in his jaw were putting up a painful protest to how tightly they were clenched, and he clicked his teeth as he adjusted to biting hard into his lip instead.

They made it sound as if Dumbledore had gotten a signed permission slip from The Dark Lord himself to hire his precious little nephew or something—no mention, even as he kept reading, that he had been tried and found innocent by the ministry themselves. He couldn't even begin to fathom the age of whatever wizard had written the exceptional suggestion that anyone under the age of perhaps forty-five was a bumbling infant too helpless to think for themselves. Though, of course, he had been wrong about his own maturity when he had thought himself secure enough to throw himself over—

The paper was starting to rip as his fingers clenched it too tightly in his fists for it to stretch, and he finally had to throw it from his grip onto his desk, letting his eyelids close forcefully as if he could scrub his eyes clean of what he just read, and hopefully his brain as well.

"Err... Sir?"

He drew in such a long slow breath, that his chest finally could no longer expand, and remained held in place until he could collect himself. Letting it out quietly, he turned on his heel, looking completely serene and placid, and feeling as if he could burn a hole through any paper unfortunate enough to be waved in front of his face.

"Mr. Wells," he said in reply, with such an eerie forced calm that the boy looked suddenly frightened. "I have to go take care of some things before my first class. Feel free to use this office till you've had enough time to collect yourself. And please, remember to lock the door."

But even as he left, taking the dungeon steps up two at a time, once he was faced with the decision of where to even go from there, he came up short. He already knew all the staff including Dumbledore were still at breakfast, a quick peek through the open doors as he stealthily strode passed confirmed this, and he certainly wasn't going back in there. He could stalk the hall hoping for the headmaster to leave before it would be time for him to go to his class, but as he chewed his tongue in irritation, he had every inclination that counting on Dumbledore to be reliable in an instance such as this was like hoping for a Christmas miracle.

Then there was the predicament that, Dumbledore or no, his classes would be starting up for the day—and soon. How many students were likely to have read to the second page of the Daily Prophet, though? He guessed just one—because that was all it would take, and word of mouth would do the rest. It was going to be an extremely arduous day of repeating the same convictions to a bunch of gossipy little kids all day. And that wasn't even mentioning their parents, who would inevitably be reading the paper at a much higher rate.

It was everything he had feared from the beginning of the school year, but which had always remained at such a far distance from reality that he had finally let those worries go. Well, now it seemed as if they had all very much arrived; coming in the same carriage as even more headaches of which he hadn't dreamed.

As the day wore on, he perhaps shouldn't have been so quick to pre-emptively judge it—the day, as it turned out, was the least of his worries. It was the night, with no classes or other distractions, that was giving him a much more difficult time.

Try as he might to stay holed up in his office, thoroughly drained after indeed hours of repeating over and over that he had been acquitted; that it was none of the business of teenagers who couldn't even produce an adequate potion; that the Prophet was a load of rubbish that had gone downhill since the previous editor was killed during the war—and, no, he hadn't had a hand in killing him, thank-you-very-much; he still then had to deal with knocks on his office door from the most maddening of the bunch: his own House students. The Slytherins were mostly taking this rumor that their teacher was a confirmed ( _acquitted_ ) practitioner of the Dark Arts in a very different stride.

Wells was apparently, much to Severus's complete disbelief, handling his father's arrest very well. At least, showing up to his office with a group of his close friends, looking with all the gleaming-eyed determination like he was ready for a fight wasn't something he would have dreamed the fifth-year boy was capable of—or stupid enough for. When he had opened the door, he had felt like he was about to be jumped by the very Youth Division of the Death Eaters that the Daily Prophet had so ineptly described. They didn't seem as happy when he all but slammed the door in their face with a sharp word to go do their homework and perhaps pick up a book on Azkaban, because four underage boys were certainly not breaking anyone out of it in this century. Unfortunately there wasn't anything he could recommend to help with their thick heads that had come up with the idea of bringing this to a teacher. He had already told them a dozen times by now that they weren't getting any 'special lessons' out of him.

After such a day, he just wanted to sit completely still at his desk with nothing more than the crackle of the fire and the soothing sound of silence. He had abandoned talking to Dumbledore, as he wasn't in any mood to hear a bunch of admonishments smugly underlined in righteousness, and besides, the headmaster had sent him no enchanted note nor any other message at all that now might be a great time for a meeting. So he wasn't going to be the one to run to him for help.

He sat there for a long while, chewing on his lip and staring at a blank piece of parchment, not sure if he was setting up to write home, write a request for an early holiday, or write an inquiry into a one-way ticket to Siberia—or write to someone who perhaps was already there for all he knew of the woman's whereabouts.

It was then that the little brass instrument on his desk that he had recently procured—after the day of his first meeting of the month with the headmaster had left him, too, wanting a way to see who was at his door at all times, which had been coming in handy as of late—began to chime and smoke. He barely glanced up, not even wanting to see which Slytherin student it was this time probably coming to ask for an autograph of The Dark Lord or something. But the little figure that was swirling into shape looked familiar in a way much distinct from a student. Its long hair seemed to swish too much for the smoke to hold the form correctly until it had come to a stop, where he watched the figure turn a quarter and the tiny smoky hand raise. The corresponding knock on his door gave him a start regardless.

He didn't get up, and after a long beat of silence, he thought he could see the sigh even on the tiny smoke figure. She knocked again. His legs finally spurred into motion, but only to come to a standstill at the door, staring at the handle. He was just taking a steadying breath, as he quickly tried to sort out what to even think of this and why he was having such trepidation, when a voice came from the other side of the door.

"Severus, I can see your shadow over the door crack, let me in."

Well, that settled it for him—he definitely wasn't letting her in now. Glaring at the door, imagining where Freya's face was on the other side, he spoke in the same slightly lowered voice, strong enough to get through the wood, but not enough to carry down the hall that she was stood in.

"Been having too much fun on holiday?" he said with only slightly concealed bitterness. "Needing a break from all the excitement?"

The sigh was audible now, and he could just imagine her head tilting back in that way that caused her hair to flow in liquid motion along with the movement.

"Yes, I am just having the _time of my life_ —will you please let me in? I just want to talk."

Despite her frustration at their current speaking arrangements, he could still plainly hear the whine of concern in her voice, grating on his ears and making his lip curl in disgust.

"No. I don't think I will," he said with spiteful enjoyment that he could for once physically keep her out and there was nothing that she could do about it. His tone dropped as he continued, however, "There's nothing to talk about."

"Really? The Prophet just got you mixed up with a different Severus Snape, did they? I'm sure the students are totally buying that."

"The students can't even read a simple list of instructions, what does their opinion of a single ridiculous article matter?"

There was a pause during which he took in the minute details of the woodgrain in front of him, not enjoying being without a face to judge reactions from, but glad to at least dodge what he was dreading were golden eyes full of concern. Sure enough, her next words were a good margin softer.

"Severus... I know things might be—weird—err—between... Well, I just wanted to make sure you're alright, is—"

His wand practically smacked into the door as he cast the spell to block sound coming through so fast, cutting off the rest. Even with the sudden closed off silence, he felt the need to physically distance himself from the door, stomping angrily back to his desk and retaking his seat. Watching the smoke figure through his fingers as he rubbed his forehead, leaning heavily on one arm of his chair, he saw the visible confusion and then further attempts to knock. The door silently rattled slightly, and then much more vigorously as he watched the smoke figure beat uselessly harder. He nearly even laughed despite his foul mood when she turned around and flailed her frustration into the hallway. And then she stood still, and he watched, gripped with a creeping desolation, as she appeared to accept this conclusion, and slowly turned to disappear down the hall as an unraveling wisp of smoke.

By the end of the following week, after each new day had battered down his mood more thoroughly than the last, his memory of this encounter had taken a dramatically darker turn in interpretation. His agitated brain was warring between a prickly incredulousness that she would again take up this swooping savior routine with him, when it was her own side who was causing the upset in the first place—what with the Prophet's extravagant stretching of truths, the ministry official and his slimy sneering, and Dumbledore himself, who should have known better and warned of this event—and an unfounded, unsettling feeling in his gut caused by his wish that she had done something more than walk away. It was his own fault for shutting the door so tightly, he knew, but it had been because he didn't want to face up to someone who shared the knowledge of another truth of blame—that all of this was his fault, when all was said and done. He could raise his voice to the students who tried to pin some great evil on him, mentally marking them all off as stupid as he did, but it just began to feel as if he was yelling at his own idiotic teenage self. He was the original one who had thought himself so smug and clever, so above it all that he wouldn't get caught up in something dangerous, and if he did, he would be perfectly capable of getting himself out on his own. He was out now, and he was on his own, but only the wrong one of those things was his own doing.

As it turned out, students chattering about exciting new gossip had been only the lesser of the results of the news article.

The Slytherins he had shunned had apparently taken his hints that he would be reporting them to the headmaster if they continued (a last-ditch effort he had sunk to while he was too fed up to deal with possibly being incriminated along with them in their stupidity) exceptionally hard, as they no longer looked eager to corner him after class, but had turned just as nasty and brooding as some of the other students. For, apart from those that had been raised in households with questionable wizarding morals, there were plenty more students who had been raised in the opposite—and they were equally unhappy with the idea of one of their teachers being a Death Eater. Plenty of them had faced hardships in their family from the war, and now it seemed like he was a direct outlet for their wounded glares. The worst by far was that it seemed there were indeed rumors that had yet to be spread from students that had been in attendance at the same time as him, and apparently it was such delicious retribution towards one some now thought to be so rotten, that it had become too hilarious not to laugh behind their hands while whispering in class.

His office even proved to be a useless hiding place when letters from parents showed up addressed to him specifically, and to the headmaster himself, though he only learned of this from another letter with Dumbledore's seal, as he had been either spared the annoyance of a visit, or discarded as unimportant enough for one while the headmaster was dealing with things behind the scenes.

But while the head of the school was absent from sight, the rest of the staff was plainly around when he dared venture out of the dungeons—notable by their sharp distrustful glares they were apparently recycling from the beginning of the year. McGonagall he had expected, but it was Flitwick-whom he had hoped would have forgiven him after his student had been apologized to by Wells, and who had been the only teacher that he respected that had shown him any courtesy—eyeing him with skepticism and a small tut across the entrance hall in the middle of the week that had delivered a considerable blow. Even bumbling Professor Powers made a gasp of shock when they crossed paths unexpectedly, and hurried away without a word, leaving him feeling equally dejected—and insulted to be treated like this by such a person.

Nearly four months, down the drain. Not even his supposed 'friend' was around now. And he was too bitter and stubbornly dug into his own double-edged anger at everything around and himself to even consider reaching out. The only letter he was writing now was one to his mum to ask permission to drop in, and a resolute declaration that he was without a doubt now taking the holiday away from Hogwarts the second that term ended.

It had been Friday when he had written both of these, and Saturday when he had gotten one back from his mum agreeing to the visit, and one back from Dumbledore.

He frowned at the second letter, stowing the first in a bottom drawer of his desk without a second glance. There was still half a week of classes left, and a good ten days before Christmas itself; he was sure this was enough time to take off for a holiday where the school would be empty anyway. Sparing any details, though, the letter only requested that their usual Sunday meeting be at the earliest possible convenience tomorrow. This foreboding message did nothing good when it settled like a final stone into his already pained stomach. He went to bed that night with the covers pulled fully up to his ears, the fire lit, and still somehow shivering with his roiling thoughts.

As he stood outside the headmaster's office for the third time that month, he felt convinced for once that things were not as bad as he had been imagining. Obviously, this was just a meeting finally about the particularly eventful week, and wasn't anything to do with his request for holiday leave. Part of him still pessimistically held that he was only telling himself this because he couldn't take much more before he would just snap and take off full tilt into the woods, but he relaxed this nerve, and even managed to announce his presence with a prompt knock, not even standing outside on the landing for more than half a minute.

"Come in."

Severus took his usual place, standing in the middle of the office before the desk.

The two men took a second to evaluate each other, each taking in with their own tepid expression the signs of weariness on the other's face. It was Dumbledore who blinked first, with a twitch of his mouth that could have been almost mistaken for a quick smile.

"I take it," Dumbledore said in his steady voice, "that you have had a similar week as I have."

Severus didn't much think that anyone could have had a week such like the one he had, with such an acute coming together of events in such a disastrous way. It was certainly rich to hear Dumbledore try and act as if he had any idea. His face twitched in a similar way, though his felt even more off the mark from a smile and more like a dog giving a warning before a bite.

The headmaster took a deep breath and nodded, accepting this less than encouraging response.

"I see. Well... First things first; how is Mr. Wells doing? The boy, of course, though I dare say his father could do with a bit of a welfare check about now."

With his tongue pressed between his teeth, he could have almost exploded into a rant about how the boy was completely beyond him, acting like a complete child that would not see reason, and was probably going to wind himself up in this very office himself sooner or later—and Severus would not be left standing there taking the blame for this one after the boy had talked back to him in front of the whole Potion's class the other day. He almost broke his silence, just to have a chance to finally let out his pent-up fury that had been boiling away all week—almost—but this was still Dumbledore, and he would rather chew his tongue off than confide in him.

"He's... struggling with the news," he said with some effort to keep the temper from his voice, "but I believe he will settle down eventually after the much-needed holiday. He confirmed with me that he is at least going home for it to spend time with his mother."

"I see," Dumbledore said again, and flattened a hand over his beard as he nodded again, frowning in thought down at his desk. "That is good to hear. I'm glad he has some family."

"Yes," he said with a slight punctual note in nod to the similarity to his own holiday request, "I agree."

There was a lapse of silence in which his hard questioning gaze went unmet, and he looked off to the side in exasperation, staring out the windows. It was barely light out now in the deepening winter mornings, and a small snow squall had refreshed overnight what had melted from the beginning of the month. A thick blanket of clouds matched the thin blanket of white, and threatened even more snow perhaps later that day. At the moment, the scenery just looked bleak and empty. His eyes strayed back to more enticing colors, like the gold of the empty perch behind the headmaster's desk—and then swiftly back to the headmaster, who was now looking at him at last.

"Severus..."

He had to stop his eyes from forcefully squeezing shut as he recognized this tone of voice immediately. He didn't want to deal with this, not now. _Could you not just let me at least have Christmas, you pompous old man?_

"Forgive me, I would not normally trespass like this into someone's personal affairs, but... speaking of mothers..."

Severus squinted with distrust, not liking where this was going or how exactly it was going there.

"In your request that you sent me—to take off for the holiday—you mention going home for Christmas, yes? And might I be mistaken in thinking that you mean... to your childhood home with your own mother? Is that right?"

His eyes remained narrowed as he tried to sort out this odd line of questioning, and he didn't answer right away.

This wasn't exactly correct, at least, not in the details, but he certainly wasn't about to explain his home life to Dumbledore. It was making his shoulders feel tense just broaching the personal subject at all, and he suddenly recalled a phoenix biting his hand for touching its back—he felt much like he could relate at the moment.

"Yes, that's right," he said, his eyes sliding away to the windows again.

The sound of the headmaster's slow steady intake of breath before his next reply almost made Severus almost lose his temper.

"I see... Then, I am afraid, that I cannot honor your request."

His head snapped back to attention, incredulous. "What?" _Because of that?_

Dumbledore leaned forward on his desk over his netted hands, peering over his spectacles with an air of weary disappointment as he spoke, "Severus, if you had not lied just now, then perhaps I could have been swayed. But I find myself rather at a loss."

He gaped at him, quite forgetting to play nice and polite as his shoulders raised in defense and his hands clenched at his sides. " _Are you_ —" He didn't even know what to say. He had never imagined something so outlandish as being held to the exact letter of his familial relations in order to go on holiday.

"I am sorry," the headmaster went on with a stern note to his voice that seemed to underline that he would not be changing his mind no matter how sorry he actually was, "but I do have it on good authority—quite good—that you and your mother haven't been on friendly terms in years. So if you are unwilling to state your true whereabouts—"

"Hang on," he interrupted, feeling like he might be going mad now. Dumbledore was graciously patient while Severus stood in silent shock gazing at the floor. And then his mouth snapped shut.

'Good authority,' was it? Gathering information that he most definitely shouldn't have on him—all in order to deny him from leaving the castle? Which he now highly doubted that he would have ever been allowed to do—obviously. This was just an excuse to catch him in a lie, and even if he ran downstairs and shoved his mother's letter in Dumbledore's face, breeching his own shred of privacy, it wouldn't matter. There was only one person who the man trusted to get him information on his 'accused' Death Eater teacher so that they could both keep him thoroughly penned in to the right side of the line. His eyes flicked back up into those obnoxiously calm blue ones.

"And who told you... this private information?"

The eyes stayed on his, but Dumbledore lowered his chin a fraction before he said, "I imagine that you know that it could only have been one person." There was a sudden sadness in his eyes, as if he regretted having to deliver this truth, but the sentiment was not received by its intended.

He was sure he had never mentioned his mother to Freya. Unless the woman could read minds, which he couldn't rule out at this point, because he highly doubted that he knew much of anything about her true self. Maybe in a passing comment he had said something in a certain tone of voice about family, or during one of the many hours they had sat in the library pouring over their classwork, but there was also another answer. She had been completely absent from the school for weeks at a time. She could have been anywhere, doing any manner of assignment under the guise of a holiday...

"Am I right to assume," he said, struggling to keep his voice even, but wanting to hear it for himself what the truth would be, "that even if I told you where I was headed... I wouldn't be permitted?"

Dumbledore held his gaze for a moment before answering, appearing to contemplate his readiness to hear what he had to say.

"No, Severus. I rather think that it would be better for you to remain here for the time being."

So that was it then.

Not the innocent mistake that he had put in his notice too late, or even that he was lying about his plans. He was never getting out of here in the first place. And the answer to why was written on the face of the man before him, etched in every mistrusting line of his frown, which only seemed to be growing deeper as Severus failed to hide his own expression from his face. What did it matter, though? He could play nice for months and apparently it amounted to nothing except further indignity. And this, trampling on such a delicate topic such as this, was not something he could put up with. The whole school hating him, everyone thinking he was the walking embodiment of evil, that he had spawned the Dark Arts himself at the tender age of eleven—whatever. They were just imbeciles; he could grit his teeth and get through it. But the thought that this whole time, the whole entire time, he wouldn't have been allowed out of bounds even if he had asked—because he hadn't realized what he was signing up for—that Dumbledore had agreed this was where he needed to be, not in Azkaban—because this was his prison. Right where Dumbledore could watch over his every move. Him and his bloody lying _pet_.

"Severus." Dumbledore was apparently reading the atmosphere of wordless fury emanating off his employee perfectly well now that he was making no efforts to hide it. The headmaster closed his eyes with a sigh that seemed to tax his elderly frame. "If you are upset by my decision, I would ask that you take the time to think it through with a clear mind." He raised those piercing blue eyes once more with a summoned strength shining within. "Otherwise, you should at the very least... remember what I have told you in the past."

His teeth came down on the tip of his tongue too tight, and he almost laughed over the sharp pain of it before he spoke. He wasn't going to repeat the words, though, because at that moment he had made up his mind, and he didn't altogether want that decision known.

With his mind clear, except for those simple words remembered in his head repeating, he lowered his gaze to the floor in contemplation of his actions. His posture recoiled, and he straightened up at once. He thought about all this man had done for him to keep him out of trouble; all the opportunities he had afforded. He even forced himself to swallow, looking anxious.

_If you should feel the need to leave, for any reason... don't come back._

Severus let his gaze go clouded, even pained, with a flicker of anger still to be found if one were to look closely at his eyes. And then he lifted his head, with a reluctant nod, and said in his best harmlessly begrudging voice, "Yes, headmaster. I remember."

He left the office with a cold but not biting promise to at least present himself for the Christmas feast.

And then he went back down the several flights of stairs, passed McGonagall and her sour expression, passed the early rising students and their wide-eyed stares, back into the dungeons, through his office—and packed his bags at once.

There had been a shift—not a great one, but a noticeable margin of error—while he was collecting his little pile of things from around his bedchamber and office. Primarily in that, as he was trying to figure out how to put away the smoke-dispensing visitor detector without dumping ash all over his clothes in his suitcase, he had been unsure which things he even really needed; or, in fact, wanted. Which had led to him wondering which things would be alright to leave behind; and then if he left them behind, what would happen to them; and then, finally, that perhaps there was a chance he could only pack up what would fit, leave the rest, and maybe... just maybe... come back for the rest. Because, after all, wouldn't it be silly for Dumbledore's supposed spoken law to apply to such a ridiculous misunderstanding? Surely the man wasn't as completely rigid as he made out to be in front of him? He was a soft, squashy-hearted sap that stood behind podiums opining about muggles and morals. If he took off now and got in his holiday without the due permission, it would be bad; but then he could return as if nothing had happened, and nothing would have—and surely that would be alright? Surely the man wasn't as unyielding to chuck him from his chosen career just for visiting his mum on Christmas, right?

Of course, this had just been his stance on Sunday, with his feet growing cold while the hours after the meeting were still fresh and he had free time to hole up in his room and overthink. By the time he had gotten through the half-week of classes left of the term, with a rowdy barely contained bunch of students that were even more viciously ready for the holiday than him, he was no longer under any impression that he was going to remain at this cursed unwelcoming castle for even one more night.

And so it was that, in the middle of the night, casting so many glances over his shoulders that he might as well have not been looking where he was going at all, Severus stole down the castle grounds, trudging through the snow, and set off in the direction of the main gates—filled with a furious abandon that gave him half a mind to stop by and visit his old friends while he was out, if he fancied the fun little excursion to ferret them out of where they must be hiding. Perhaps he'd pick up a cake.

He kept expecting Dumbledore, in a spark of unpredictable knowledge, to descend upon him without warning and stop him. Or else tell him to get a move on. It was with nothing but bitterness that he remembered the old wizard's face, but his resentment was overfilled beyond the brim, and there was plenty to spill elsewhere. Onto himself, for one; for trusting the man for so long. All his schemes, and he had never been more than a disposable pawn in all of them. It was twisted in a way, that he must despise him so much, but still allowed him to teach here and gave him such an insurmountable job to do. He could lie better than any in the face of death itself, but sit him in front of a bunch of teenagers that couldn't comprehend basic self-preservation and subtlety, and his brain just rotted into an angry mush. It wasn't worth the effort. He belonged elsewhere, as he had _told_ Dumbledore before.

But of course, he was an untrustworthy corrupted villain in all of their eyes; a man already marked by what he had chosen early on.

His left elbow gave an involuntary twitch at the thought, and he shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of robes underneath his cloak. The little miniature suitcase in his pocket, which he had shrunk down to size so as not to be caught in the hall with its telltale bulk by any misfortunate encounter, felt like an exceptionally heavy stone caught between his fingers. He gripped it tight, testing the weight appreciably as it grounded his unsteady form.

Out in the dead of the wintry night, with the soles of his shoes spelled silent on the snow, so that the only sounds were the ringing of the flagpoles on the quidditch pitch and the rush of a bracing breeze through the dry dormant branches of the forest beyond, he felt entirely different somehow. It couldn't just be that he was shivering despite not feeling all that cold, because he did the same in the still quiet of his bedchamber; nor could it be that he was all that tired after having left without getting any sleep, because he had been sleeping mostly fine as of late—perhaps even better than normal. It was almost as if with Freya gone, he had blessedly forgotten the sound of phoenix song, and was now getting solid dreamless sleep for hours the past few weeks. This extra sleep had never really made him feel any less tired in his bones, but it at least never had him waking up in panic-stricken guilt and grief. He could just simply sleep.

He bit his lip, and another soft sound was added to the barren grounds as he sighed through his nose. He had been trying so hard to avoid thinking about her.

In times such as after a particularly rough class, when he was filled with a simmering rage, he could conjure up the strength to blast his anger in her direction, blaming her for every imaginable crime of hers that had undoubtedly put him in this situation.

But like this, with his nerves on high alert, and his heart beating as he listened intently to hear if he was about to be attacked from behind for the crime of taking a holiday, he just felt an empty hopeless mess. It was no use even arguing in her favor at this point, as he had already told himself a hundred times. She was the closest person to Dumbledore there was, and if she hadn't heard of how their meeting had gone, hadn't been immediately ordered to go check on him or at the very least keep an eye on him, then she wasn't coming. He was well and truly being let go. The truth was in every vast meter of the calm chilly air, so undisturbed around him.

His footsteps stopped just shy of the closed main gates, sparing the last few feet of fresh snow, which had just begun to gain a dusting of flakes from above as the clouds finally seemed to be breaking. He had been prepared for this obstacle, and already had his wand gripped in his right hand in his pocket to unlock it.

He drew one last breath of freezing air, feeling it fill his lungs with a welcome ache that went well with his poisonous mood. He hoped he really wasn't welcome back after this, because he never wanted to look into those blue eyes, so full of judgement and disdain, ever again.

"Going for a walk?"

His heart jerked in his chest, and his vision was suddenly obstructed as his breath blew out of him in a white cloud of condensation.

"Mind if I join you?"

In the unusual atmosphere of the night, with his outer layer so cold he felt numb and ungrounded, and teetering where he was on the edge of a very sharp invisible line, he almost felt as if he was being transported back four months. He could have been in the library, standing in front of a different locked gate, being pestered with the very same voice that now came from behind his back, just as it had then.

This time, however, he was standing at it already knowing the kind of person who was behind him. That despite her faux chipper voice, even with the obvious heart taken out of it as it now sounded, she wasn't there to smother him in helpfulness. She never had been.

"What... do you want?" he hissed through gritted teeth.

There was a longer pause than was usual for her, and when he heard her voice, it seemed apparent that this was causing her some difficulty. It only reminded him of how her voice had first sounded, before he had attacked her in the dungeon hall, before pushing her away to the point that she was always sarcastic and joking with him. He had placed her perfectly where she needed to be, held away from him, and even when he had broken that gap, it hadn't really done anything. It always had been just a fluke, after all.

"I... I just came to make sure you aren't doing anything stupid," she said, with her weakest attempt yet at sounding normal. "That's all."

"What's stupid about taking a holiday?" he said, still not turning around but flicking his gaze to the corners as if he could still bounce his glare off the nearby wall and hit her with it from this angle. "I hear you're very fond of them yourself."

There was a pause just as lengthy as before, and he was starting to grow more agitated every second he had to wait for her just to hear more flimsy chatter.

"I'm... sorry that I couldn't be here, Severus... I really am. I just couldn't."

"What a well-thought-out excuse," he said with a bitterly derisive snort. "It took you a whole month you come up with that, did it?"

"I'm telling the truth—"

"Are you?" he shot back over his shoulder, nearly turning his head around. He could just make out the blurry edge of a dark form against the white snowy background, but he angled back an inch to block it out with his hair. He didn't want to look at her just yet anyway. It would be easier if he didn't.

"Severus," she sighed in response, and it sounded as if she was more tired than he had heard her before. Apparently, her 'holiday' hadn't been going so well. "Please... just... don't do this."

"Don't do what-exactly what you've been doing? Just going off unannounced at your fancy?"

"I did announce—… Well, I mean, I told... Albus..."

"Funny," he remarked with a cold glare into the snow, as if trying to rival its temperature, "I did as well. But I'm sure you already know what sort of response I received."

It sounded like she was trying to suppress her sigh this time, but the huff of air was still plenty audible in the stark quiet.

"Yes, I do. And I'm here to... beg you—I'm serious—please don't go."

Something in her voice, not quite whining with worry for him, but sounding like she was trying to genuinely warn him of some great evil that was perhaps lurking just outside the gates, finally made him curious enough about just what on earth the woman's face looked like in that moment. He couldn't discern just from her voice any longer, he needed to see it for himself. Plus, he wanted to see her expression when he gave his reply.

"What are you going to do, stop me?"

But as he turned confidently around, his smug and hostile smirk fell quickly off his face before he even had a chance to gather her reaction. Her expression did indeed look shocked, though, and he could clearly see her puff up in defense of his gaze, darting her eyes away. She looked every bit as timid as she would have if he had approached her, only he hadn't. He was stood completely still, merely gazing in his own astonishment, taking in every detail as he followed her self-conscious hand as it tugged at her hood. He had never seen her with it up before, but then, it wasn't really the focus of her changed appearance. His eyes lingered on the hair that she was trying to cover up by tucking it far into the back of the hood beneath her robes, remembering a time when she had briefly cast a spell to make it black. Now, though, he had no illusion that this was of her own doing. In the reflected light from the snow all around, he could just make out, if he focused on her fringe, that it wasn't the flat impenetrable black that it had been before, looking so fake and unlike her, but a dark and dreary looking brown, looking even more ashen than the brown of her robes. Yet it somehow still matched her, because as his focus shifted to her eyes, they were circled in a grey of their own, looking almost sunken under the shadow of her hood she was hiding in.

Apparently he had been staring too openly for too long, because her eyes, which he now realized held no spark of gold in them, came back up to his with much distress. He watched her look down for a second longer to collect herself, then come back up with a steeled determination in her eyes, holding his gaze steady as if daring him to say something. But the truth was still plain in the haunted look on her face, no matter how brave-faced she tried to act.

"You're... dying."

Her eyes cast a much more darkly foreboding warning than he had ever seen in them before.

"Not quite yet," she shot back defiantly. "I've got plenty left in me to stop you if I have to."

The surprise wore off and his face settled back into a shrewd look of confusion as he tried to figure out how this new piece fit into the puzzle he had thought was already complete. He was thoroughly and utterly sick of trying to play this game, though, and the answer to everything was right here in front of him.

"Well... before you go turning into a pile of ash or embarrassing yourself," he said with growing aggression, "perhaps you wouldn't mind answering a few questions?"

She shook her head, but it was only out of apparent disbelief at his inquiry. She looked ready to snap her fingers and wrestle him back into the castle if she had to, if not just because she still appeared plenty uncomfortable being seen as she was, but she shrugged her shoulders at last.

"Sure. Why not?"

He thought for a moment about where to even start, then decided at the beginning, where he had just been reminded of.

"That day I went to the west wing of the library to access the restricted section... why were you there?"

She blinked. "What?" Her frown deepened, but he wasn't going to help her along until she started giving answers. She quietly sighed, her eyes roaming upwards in thought. "I... think I was just hanging about. Madam Pince doesn't like me anywhere near there; I was just enjoying it while I could before term started. Why?"

His gaze stayed fixed to hers, unmoving, and she finally caught on, looking more and more like she didn't want to see what was in his eyes.

"You still don't trust me," she said, and despite it not being a question, she sounded unable to believe it. "After everything, you still think..."

It was a testament to how much he did indeed not believe a word from her, because the expression on her face just then would have nearly caused a reaction. He'd never actually seen her cry unless it was for someone else, but this seemed as close as he would ever witness. For a fleeting second, he almost wanted to believe her, and then he saw on her face something that he imagined perfectly depicted an experience he had had very recently after not being trusted; and he watched her expression turn to a tired sour acceptance.

"Are you going to call me a pet again, then?"

"Perhaps," he said, relieved she had spoken up again, because it rekindled his purpose. "That depends on how you answer my next question—and tell me the truth." His feet replanted so he was facing her head on, with no room for her to escape even an inch of his vision. "I don't want to hear anything else. Just the truth... Did you approach me on his orders?"

She looked up at him with such a hard expression he thought at first that she was about to shake her head and call him an idiot, but she only got as far as the shake, tugging her hood back in place as it briefly slipped.

"No, I didn't."

But she would no longer meet his eyes, and as he watched the tiny twitch of her brows, his face was pulled into a knowing grimace. It caught her attention, and she finally looked up, with a more earnest plea.

"I didn't!"

He let every bit of venom come out in his face and voice as he ripped the page out of her own book and threw it back in her face:

" _Liar_."

He had been wrong about his original assessment that her eyes were flat black, because with them now opened wide, he saw the remaining dull gold left in them as she took on the expression of one punched in the gut. She apparently remembered and recognized where he was pulling the word and its inclination from, because her cheeks nearly threatened a slight shade of pink under the pallor. Much apart from giving in to further embarrassment, though, he thought that he had rather touched the wrong nerve.

"I am _not_ , you bloody _prick_ —how dare you—just... just say that..." She did drop her gaze then, and her expression became an unreadable knot of turmoil that he would not look away from, wanting every last detail to be known.

"I'm not a _pet_ ," she asserted, spitting the word as if sick of hearing it, "I don't follow orders like that. I can..." A shadow of defeat crossed her angry face, and it made her tired features look even more grim. When she spoke again, it was barely a whisper, but each word was like a hard stone thrown into the crisp cold night. "I can think for myself, you know."

He turned the words over in his mind, but they didn't tumble into place until she had dragged her gaze, looking like she very much did not wish to, back up to his eyes. His lungs filled with the crystalizing air with a sharp intake—and he understood what he had been getting wrong this whole time.

"You approached me yourself," he said just as quietly. She gave a tiny nod, her eyes blinking away and back again. "But... with the same goal. To spy on me. You were simply... doing it on your own." She frowned at this, not looking at him, but he wasn't in the mood to hear any technicalities while he felt as if he were swaying on locked legs. She was quick to jump on him before he could start in on her, though.

"You make him sound so evil," she said with a laugh so weak it was just a sad puff of condensation. "He was never trying to—to spy on you—or whatever you thought." He narrowed his eyes in strict opposition to this view, but let her go on, because her eyes, still downcast, looked by the guilt plain on her face to have more to say. "It was just... me. I just wanted to... to keep an eye on you, and—yes—I did talk to him about it, because he's my friend, so of course I would—"

"Of course you would tell him my personal business—a man who hates me and wants me locked up—"

"He doesn't hate you! And a lot of your business is his business, considering you work here around students."

He snorted. "And I suppose you think he's being gracious by keeping me locked up here, do you?" He remembered why he was harboring such acutely livid thoughts in the first place, and continued with his accusations before she could even respond. "And by the way, where is it exactly that you weaseled out the information about my mother from?"

She blinked at him, her mouth still open from where he had cut her off the first time, looking thrown off.

"W-what...?"

"Don't lie, not now."

"I am _not._ What do you mean about your mum?"

"Stop it. He admitted himself that it was you."

"I... I seriously don't know what you're talking—"

" _Shut up!_ " he snapped, unable to take any more of this. He didn't care anymore; for all he could sort out she could have been hiding it because what she had done to get the information had been especially bad, or perhaps just some hidden way that she didn't want to share with him. She could be peeking into his dreams while he slept for all he knew.

"Severus... I'm telling you the truth. Why would I lie now?"

His only response was to scowl almost lazily back at her pleading face.

"Would you just _listen_?" she said, stomping her foot into the snow. She didn't need to fight for the room to talk, though, as it was perfectly clear with his held silence. She still seemed to hesitate, biting her lip. "Look... You want the truth? I really wish you would stop hating him, because he doesn't hate you. He didn't... keep you locked up in here, like you say..."

He didn't think she could have possibly thrown him yet another shock, but as he listened with his quickening heartbeat to her voice that seemed held steady only with how pained she was to speak, he felt even the anger slip from his face in surprise.

"If you want to know why you're here, and not involved in the Order... it's because of me. It's just me. So you can stop blaming him."

Of all the truths he had wanted to pull from her, this was not one which he had ever wanted to hear. Because it meant that there was not one single person there who thought him worthy of any trust, and it wasn't because she was following any orders.

"Well," he said, and then swallowed down the tightness in his throat, giving his voice room to grow to a hard low steel, "if it's just you then... that's good to know. Because I'm sure that I can be walking out of here in ten seconds."

Her eyes snapped up to his in sudden panic—and then darted back down again as she realized his hand was already in his pocket, clutching his wand.

"Severus, please don't do this. I don't want to fight you."

His face pulled into a cold unhappy smile. "Is that the truth?" She winced, but held his gaze, still silently begging with him. "This should be quick then."

What little frustration had remained in her slowly faded out as he watched her shoulders seem to slacken. He wasn't under any impression that she was giving up, though, as he watched her hand slip into her own pocket and her face go stony.

"If you're going to fight me," he said with a mounting buzz in his veins, "why don't you actually try."

Her hand stopped just short of her pocket, and she slowly removed it. An anguished smile stretched across her face.

"Oh... I don't think you want me to do that, Severus. I don't play fair."

He narrowed his eyes before whipping out his wand, keeping it pointed at the ground for now but showing his threat loud and clear.

"Then neither will I."

Her eyes stayed fixed to his wand for a moment as she bit her lip, and then she seemed to concede. Her hands came up to lower her hood as if preparing herself, and then her right hand lowered in an unrelaxed way back to her side. He watched her thumb smooth over her fingertips, as if she was merely fondly remembering the touch of something and not readying her own attack. He had a strong feeling that she wouldn't be attacking, however. If he had learned anything from their mock duel, she was just going to defend no matter what he threw at her. It almost made him want to laugh to remember the calm playfulness that had been in her eyes then, so full of sparkling amber. Had her eyes been growing dull even then, as he now realized her hair must have been? He recalled that night that her eyes had looked as dark as her drunken laughter, and her hair had not seemed to glow from within against the backdrop of snow, similar, but much darker to now. Perhaps she had just wanted to do something spontaneous before she had to go and return to ash, then. It didn't mean anything.

And he couldn't be thinking about that right now. Whoever that woman had been that had whispered and laughed so sweetly with him, she wasn't here tonight. There was only an enemy before him, looking back with eyes so sad and full of concern that it made his wand hand itch.

"I'm... I'm so sorry for this," she said, and he felt his pulse quicken because it sounded like she was apologizing for what she was about to do, and he suddenly wondered if she wasn't going to be as defensive as he had thought. His eyes stayed locked to hers, searching with a fervor that almost made him step forward to get a better look at what was just beyond his reach. "And Severus... please just remember that... I am truly sorry for lying."

He flinched away from where he had been leaning forward, feeling his lip curl up in a sneer. He gave his hand a sharp twist, ready to raise it.

"You will be."

He wasn't going to make the same mistake as he first had when he had turned his wand on her. This wasn't a moment of incorrectly assumed attack; her hand was fully visible this time, her fingers pressed tight against her thumb. Nor was it a duel with a countdown; but he still waited to see her hand come up in mirror of his own all the same. It was one final courtesy, just to give her a chance—because he was not holding back this time.

In the split second as his wand slashed the line so roughly through the air that it was not quite even from one side to the other, the little clip of noise from her snapped fingers echoed a single clear crisp note.

And he saw that he had, in fact, been so easily fooled once again.

He wished her snap had sparked a great blaze, or perhaps an invisible barrier like the one he had seen her cast before. He wished she had somehow struck his mind blank and rendered his spell useless. He wished anything had happened—anything at all. But, after all, he had wanted her job to begin with because she had never seemed as capable of him in defending against the Dark.

He watched in rapid motion, before his wand had even been lowered an inch, as the blood was slashed out of her, from one shoulder to just above the other—right across her throat. And then in a horrible slowness, after the first golden drops hit the snow and she stumbled, the hair that had been spread out behind her back fell as slow soft feathers, light as the snow itself.

And he was backing up so fast that he nearly tripped, his shoulder blade colliding painfully with the wrought iron gate. He startled himself at the clanging noise, raised his wand to open it, and was through and gone from the scene in a whirl of frost.

* * *

_—***—_


	8. Blackthorn

The dry brush of the forest snapped beneath his boots, but made no sound. There hadn't been a storm in some time, and the end-of-July air could have used with a washing out. It was thick, and so was the undergrowth, but he wasn't allowed to leave traces of his path, so he could only shoulder through in annoyance on his way.

At least his walk wasn't made worse by being drunk, though Slughorn had certainly filled his goblet enough times. It had been a hassle having to come up with a new excuse to distract him while he tapped it into harmless grape juice with his wand each time. But even though he was plenty sober, he still felt in a fog. As usual, the times when he could be alone felt like a dull aggravating buzz, just waiting for the next thing to come along that he had to react to—or lie for—or fake.

The small clearing in front of the cliff face came into view sooner than he would have hoped, and he dragged his feet the rest of the way until he was standing at the edge of the trees, under a large overgrown cedar. His black eyes were fixed to the odd-looking jumble of rocks in the center, the rough granite just visible in the darkness with the moon shining on it. However, he didn't want to go in quite yet.

It wasn't until clouds had come and gathered the whole clearing into an even gloomier scene that he finally strode forward, placing his left hand on the topmost rock of the awkward pile, and relaxing the enchantment that had concealed the ugly looking mansion which he now entered.

It wasn't a place of extravagance, though perhaps at some point in history it had been; now it's many rooms only served as a place for those who had either gotten themselves seen doing something beyond excuse, or those who hadn't ever bothered to hide themselves in the first place. Or, more simply, as was his case, those who didn't want to go home, but needed some place to sleep.

As he stalked past the open archway of the sitting room, a particular someone who was too paranoid and nosy—and too loud in her activities, as she wasn't here to sleep- for her own good caught his eye and came darting out at once. His eyes closed as he kept walking, giving himself an extra moment to collect himself before he would have to turn and entertain her.

"Back from your little job? Did you have fun?" came the jeering voice.

"Yes, Bellatrix? What is it?"

She skirted around and in front of him, stopping his path. She had on that frighteningly wicked grin of hers, and if she was in a good mood, that meant nothing good could have happened while he was gone.

"He stopped by today. You just missed him, in fact."

So that was it. Only Bellatrix Lestrange could have been delighted by a visit from the person whom she didn't even need to name. He peered at her curiously, wanting to press for more, but not so fast.

"Careful," he said casually, "you'll make your husband jealous again."

She let out a low laugh as if perfectly pleased to do so. Then her expression took a turn. She seemed to be struggling to spit out something particularly repugnant.

"Actually, he was here for a reason," she said, suddenly serious and glaring up at him. "He told me to pass on to you..."

He raised a brow, but he could already guess what it was, and it gave him just the smallest bit of dark pleasure at how much he knew it would pain her to say it. She rolled her eyes and her head followed with them as if her pile of long dark hair was suddenly too heavy for her neck, bending at an odd angle.

"He said to _thank you_ ," she enunciated with much distaste, "for always bringing him such good information. And that he'd be wanting to meet with you after tonight."

His maliciously smug grin cracked a fraction at the second part of the delivered message.

"What did you tell him, Severus? What was it?"

But his mind had just gone quite blank, and there was only a ringing sound between his ears. He hadn't told him anything—lately. But he had told him something many months ago, something that he had been working so hard to undo, and had begged him—pleaded with him—not to follow through on.

So then, of course, he had acted on a night that his hopeless servant was busy carrying out other orders.

—

Severus stood under the large cedar tree in the rough circle of snow-free ground its branches provided, shivering hard as he stared out at the pile of rocks.

The cold was only at partial fault for his body's shaking, and he made no move to pull his cloak tighter around himself. He was stood stock still, gazing with flat expressionless eyes as he waited.

It would have to be done carefully; he couldn't go barging in unannounced, not after he had been gone so long without a word. It was what plenty of others had done, of course, but that excuse would never work on who he assumed, by mental checklist from who hadn't appeared in the papers under a boastful headline of capture yet, would be waiting inside—if, indeed, anyone at all was inside. He had been waiting for someone to come out for quite some time already.

Although, even with the spare time, he hadn't dared let his mind wander off any further than the little circle of black forest floor beneath him, penned in by the bright white snow. He couldn't let himself think further ahead than just this for now. Survival. For he was almost certain that he had just sealed his fate more thoroughly than if he had just denounced Dumbledore outright to his face.

By the time a woman appeared as if from out of the cliff face itself, with long messy black hair and the black hood of a traveling cloak pulled up, he had lost all track of time. He only knew that it was still dark and morning had yet to break; and that he felt colder in his bones than even the numb tips of his fingers.

It was a tense reunion, and he hoped the frosty look to his skin had helped cover up how out of practice his face was at performing just right, but eventually, with an ironic graciousness from the universe that flew in the face of why he was visiting here in the first place, he was let in. His legs carried him unsteadily to the room he had sporadically occupied before, on the ground floor with its tall skinny windows and thick velvet curtains. They were a much-needed assistant to block out the sun that would be rising soon, as he was assuredly going to sleep until noon, as he promptly fell like a statue onto the dusty bed the second after he had locked and spelled the door.

But, of course, sleep was a sweet relief—one that wasn't afforded to people such as him.

He tried to close his eyes for a time, but what his mind conjured up into the blankness was too much. He found himself lying flat on his back, staring up at the paneled ceiling instead, as if he could see every expansive bit of sky beyond it. He didn't want to release his thoughts; had been enjoying the blank closed-off feeling; but he finally could not let it go on any longer.

She really hadn't played fair. She hadn't even played a hand. He was sure her snap of fingers hadn't meant a thing other than to distract him, luring him in to his own defeat. There was no counter-curse for what he had done himself. There were only the consequences of his own actions, blowing up in his face for daring to have ever raised his wand to her.

But, terrifying as these were, he was currently safe in his hidey-hole, and the fear of Albus Dumbledore's enraged face was nothing compared to the memory of the face that was burned clearly into his mind.

She hadn't been surprised, nor upset, nor angry—only a calm, sad smile had been visible on her tired face. She had surely done it on purpose, knowing that she was goading him into attacking at full strength. He could see no other interpretation. She was clearly mad for doing it—but why? If it was to accomplish keeping him there once and for all, then she had only achieved making him run even faster. So what had been her goal then? Just to terrify him out of his wits that Dumbledore was probably marking him for dead now? She didn't at all seem like she was trying to kill him, though—just the opposite, in fact, as now she—

No, he couldn't think that. He couldn't believe that she would die from just that one attack. She was a phoenix, comprised of so much healing magic that it quite literally leaked from her eyes, and besides, she had Dumbledore there. If anyone could figure out how to heal her, it was him. Surely, she would be safe there. Surely...

The image of her blood spraying out flicked itself back into his mind like a blinding flash, making him flinch and his heart contract. He had injured a phoenix—and not just injured, but perhaps mortally wounded... His thoughts lurched back, along with a queasy turn of his stomach, to the book by Kiaran James. He had never recorded that phoenix blood was golden in its sheen. Or perhaps his mind had just been in such a state, combined with the dark of night, that he had merely imagined it. Or, his mind had already been affected by a certain curse after injuring such a creature. _Being_ , he corrected himself, picturing something less gruesome for a second. The memory of her peevish grin at being called less than human seemed an image too bright and tame for him at the moment.

Beyond all that, his brain did seem addled to the degree of coming up rather empty regarding everything she had said to him before their farce of a duel. It didn't seem to matter much if she was a liar, or if she wouldn't have ever trusted him to help with the Order, or even if she thought that he was evil incarnate—she didn't deserve to die; even the immaterial death of a phoenix. He hadn't wanted to hurt her like that, or at all. In fact, he had trusted her to be plenty strong enough to fight him...

But he had hurt her. And there was no undoing that, even if he told himself his intentions hadn't been that dark.

As he lay there getting no rest, not even in his body as it was so taut with anxious tension, he tried to bundle up all his thoughts of her into a neat package, tie a large stone to them, and throw them off some mental cliff. This imagery didn't help very much, though. They couldn't go very far from his own head. But he had to at least try. He shouldn't be thinking about her in any way, good or bad, after what he had done. He had made his choice, poor as it was, and followed through with the action. It was his own fault for it being a bad one.

But he only continued like a desperate fool down his path of bad choices, as he couldn't help but think of her. He would have settled for any other thought at that point, even ones that made him feel the heavy weight of guilt, compressing on his disquieted heart as if his ribs thought it a foreign entity.

He probably... should have just stopped to listen to her... and he probably should have written her that letter...

The true goal of her actions seemed to slowly bubble up as a natural conclusion to him. She hadn't ever needed to attack; hadn't even really needed to lift a single finger. All she had to do was stand there, perfect as she was, and he would screw everything up for himself all on his own. Just what he was good at. Without doing anything, she had delivered the precise blow to exactly where he was weakest: his own guilty conscious at his thoughtless actions.

The chipped and cracking paint on the ceiling overhead disappeared as he closed his eyes with all the feeling that he was shutting off the world for more than sleep, which he knew wasn't going to come. No, there was something else for him to think of, instead of her, and instead of sleep, that would go along suitably with the ache in his chest. He remembered the last time he had purposefully replayed the tune in his head- but that wasn't the memory he was trying to recall in perfect detail, and he pushed it aside, honing in with all his mind on one distinct beautiful, and terrible, sound, as his torso constricted in pain until he was curled up in a ball.

By the time he had finally gotten out of bed—not woken up, which he had done hours ago, off and on continuously, but actually dragged himself into a begrudging standing position and shuffled himself around his temporary room—he discovered with a peek through the velvet curtains that it was well past noon.

It would have felt like August all over again, except that it was far too cold, and back then he had stuck to either uninhabited places, or places where no one would have known him.

Now, as he exited his room, he saw faces that he remembered and some he didn't, in total counting three other people lurking quietly around the mansion, looking like caged animals whose tamer had long since gone. It wasn't everyone he knew was missing, but they were definitely all faces that he had seen most recently in wanted line-ups under headlines of misdeeds. Their greetings to him were only a notable lack-there-of, but he hadn't exactly been well-liked outside of his circle of classmates even during high times, and currently he welcomed the hostile atmosphere and dangerous glares as a sharpening familiarity. The woman who had invited him in had been friendly enough—for her, which amounted to little faith in the story he had told about his whereabouts, and open disgust that he wasn't kissing the ground for forgiveness- and they seemed to trust her judgement. She seemed to still be out, though, as Severus made his way around like an old ghost returning to its haunt, trying to find a bite to eat in the kitchen on a stomach that wasn't up to the task.

Afterward, he lasted alone in his room for all of five minutes, feeling like hours, before he was pacing around in circles so fast and wide that he had to clear a fainting couch against one wall to give himself room. He wasn't quite at the level of taking the furniture up on its so-named activity, but he was making eyes at the unsightly wallpaper and the hard wall behind it, wondering if banging his head against it would perhaps be more cathartic than any spell for the troubled mind.

Coming into place at the direct center of the open space of the room, with just the light glowing out from the sides of the curtained windows, he finally came to a standstill. After a few failed attempts, he finally managed to concentrate enough to force himself to take a long steady breath, and then another.

He had stood here before, in this exact same way, at other times during the war. Times when he had needed to center himself, feeling the open space of the long Victorian-styled bedroom against his back as if it were a threat, putting himself on display for imagined lurking dangers in every corner. It was how he stood in Dumbledore's office, as well; making himself uncomfortable to keep his back perfectly straight, and his body still and listening.

It did help, quite a bit in fact, to put himself back together as the statue that he so often had needed to be.

If he simply stayed like this, unmoving, unwavering, he could pretend he was still that person, and he wouldn't have to think about anything at all. Just his clear, calm, quiet empty mind, and the surrounding building that mirrored it...

A door banging open far down the hall caused a sudden commotion of people talking in loud voices all at once-more and different banging-some other noise that could only be made by magic—and he was holding his eyes shut tight, the air leaving him in a compressed angry stream, reminded why he hated it here so much.

He was just contemplating if he should dare go and check or if he should start booking it out the window in case it was a raid of Aurors, but he was mostly sure that the people here had not been caught yet solely because they were resolute in keeping a low profile. It did sound most unfortunately like the familiar sounds of someone being captured, however, and he was just wondering if he should bother going to try and play devil's advocate to avoid a troublesome death, when what could only be the captive's voice made its way more clearly down the hall and through his thick wooden door.

He froze in midstride, not even close enough to have raised his hand to the handle yet.

He must surely be cracking up, perhaps gone so mental that he was no longer even aware how far his mind was, because he was almost sure that-

" _Unhand me you great spidery twat!_ "

In complete spite of himself, his eyes promptly fell shut and he heaved a deep and heavy sigh.

Well, at least there was no room for mishearing there, because if he was going to be imagining her voice, he probably would have chosen something else for her to say. He yanked the door open in a panic and hurried out at once.

"Give that back, it's mine!"

It took a moment to comprehend the scene as it slowly came more into view the closer that he stalked towards the sitting room entrance. But once he got the full picture, there was nowhere else for his eyes to go other than the only bright point of life in the whole room.

It was, inexplicably, but still undoubtedly, Freya.

But not the Freya he had seen the previous night. Nor a Freya he had seen for some time, actually. Because her fringe where she had cut it after Slughorn's party was missing. And the hair itself was no longer the dull dark brown, but its usual appropriate vibrant auburn. Even her eyes, wide and angrier than a trapped cat as she tried uselessly to free her hands from her restraints, were a bright gold. In the cold light shining in through the window, they even looked the dangerous flashing yellow he was familiar with from what felt like long ago.

But when those eyes flicked to him as he stepped into the door frame, they only stayed a fraction of a second, seeming to find him not as interesting as her current quarry, despite leaving him feeling like he had been struck by amber lightning. For, as his eyes dropped, he saw that clear across the front of her robes, just below the neck, was a long cut in the fabric—and below it, there was nothing but smooth skin.

"I'm telling you, that's mine, _give it back_!"

His eyes finally tore away from her to where she was looking, at Bellatrix, who was holding Freya's little black planner and trying without success to pry it open with her bony fingers. She looked up as he came in.

"Ah, Severus. Come to have a look?" Bellatrix nodded her head at the other woman with a mischievous grin.

He opened his mouth to reply, but Freya had just snapped her head towards him with such sudden interest that he was rendered mute, glancing back at her in fright at the unreadable look at her face. Before he could even begin to come up with some sort of cover story, she had already spoiled his first option of feigning ignorance.

"Sev?"

His eyebrows came down automatically in a disapproving knot, but this was really not the time to be getting worked up over what she called him—as now Bellatrix and the other two Death Eaters in the room were staring from her to him—and he to them and to her—the yet unknown phoenix of Albus Dumbledore, caught in their midst and so far acting about as clever as a homegrown carrot.

"You two know each other?" Bellatrix asked in surprise.

He finally managed to force out some words, praying that his natural propensity for lying was still just as naturally good.

"From the school," he concluded as vaguely as possible.

"Really?" Bellatrix turned back to Freya with renewed interest, like she had just discovered that the necklace she had found in the trash was a priceless heirloom. "She works for _Dumbledore_ , then?"

Freya looked just as surprised in return, though hers was innocent where the other woman's expression was clearly not.

"Oh, do you know Albus?" she said, as if this was all just a big misunderstanding. "Me too!"

Everyone in the room seemed to go very still, gaping at her, and then Bellatrix turned back to him.

"This one's already a bit cracked, isn't she?"

At a complete loss for words now, his mind quite gave up trying to play any angle off of this, and just joined in the staring, letting Bellatrix talk for him.

"We found her, wandering around in the woods, no wand, looking like this," she gestured to what was arguably a similarly shabby appearance to their surroundings, but with more of what looked like dirt and debris from the forest on the hem of her robes. Bellatrix narrowed her eyes. "I knew she didn't seem like a muggle... So, what's she doing here then?"

This question was directed at him without a second glance at Freya, who was just a captive to them and looked put out by not being addressed. His brain had collected enough threads of an idea to finally piece together a story, though, and he cut her off before she could speak.

"That makes sense," he said with slow confident casualness, eyeing Freya as well, who didn't seem to think this made sense at all. "I believe I understand what happened... I had her under the Imperius Curse to tell me anytime Dumbledore made a move out of the castle. I must have forgotten to," he let his eyes linger over hers, hoping she was getting the message to play along, " _shut_ her off... when I left."

Bellatrix, in all her skeptical nature, looked unconvinced. "And how do you suppose she found you?"

"People have been known to do incredible things under the curse," he said easily, peering at Freya as if she were no more than an interesting irregularity. But she seemed to not have been paying a speck of attention to any of his performance, because she was looking between them with even more confusion.

"I'm not under any curse," she said defiantly, making him bite his tongue as all the Death Eater's heads snapped towards her. "I've never even seen you before."

They looked back to him, and he gave a second's wry smile. "I may have also had to adjust her memories. On several different occasions."

Thankfully this seemed to be a good enough cover, though he did not at all like the smile that it brought to Bellatrix's face.

"So," she said, pulling out her wand and making his back stiffen, because he realized what was coming, "she's just a puppet then, is she?"

"I am not a _puppet_!" she said with all the force she had once denied being a pet to him. He sincerely wished she was, so he could shut her up and make her realize what was happening. But there wasn't a moment of hesitation to even do more than turn to look at her just as the spell hit.

" _Crucio!_ "

He flicked out his wand so fast that he was knocking the caster off her concentration before her victim's knees had even hit the floor, stepping forward between the two women in the same swift motion.

" _Enough_ ," he hissed with a scowl in Bellatrix's direction, trying to keep the spike of adrenaline in his blood under control so that the full force of his defiance wouldn't show. He lowered his wand with considerable effort, not wanting the shocked look of fury on her face at his interruption to turn into an all-out fight. "Her brains are already scrambled as is, Bellatrix. Go find something else to play with before you bring undue attention on us all. Whatever she's doing here, I will handle it myself."

All he got back in reply was a cold, enraged glower, but he knew the depths of her anger went far deeper than this surface level annoyance. He turned around to Freya, who was still on the floor. Holding back the urge to immediately help her up, with his face still partially in view of watchful eyes, he instead had to settle for swiping at her wrist and dragging her to her feet, though he tried to at least be gentle about it, avoiding where the ropes were tightly coiled around the skin. He couldn't handle looking her in the face right now, though, and immediately turned away, feeling her shake beneath his grip. Bellatrix was still peering at him with interest, but he gave her a friendly kind of sneer, and she returned it looking malevolently mollified.

"M-my book..."

He had barely taken a step forward when he was stopped in his tracks at the quiet voice to his side. He froze for a second, then turned back, looking around. Bellatrix made a sharp scoff.

"Can't even get it open," she said with a sour note, evidently not happy at having so much fun ruined for her. She looked even more surprised when, with a flick of his wand, Severus ripped it from her hand and caught it in his.

"Go on then!" she shouted down the hall at them as he led the way quickly towards his room. "Have fun with your little puppet girlfriend, Severus!"

The poor door took all his rage as he slammed it shut, and he cast his spells for secrecy with a bit too much snap to his wand movements.

He turned sharply on his heel.

" _What. Are. You. Doing?_ "

Freya blinked at him, her eyes wide and innocent. She didn't answer, only looked down at her hands just in time to see the ropes disappear as he jabbed his wand at them and then pocketed it. With them free, they both seemed to be staring at the shakiness of her fingers, and his temper dropped considerably as he regretted not immediately seeing to her status first. When she looked up again, he felt his pulse show no signs that it would be lowering any time soon.

"Err... Finding you?"

" _Excellent work,_ " he enunciated.

She seemed to be growing less and less pleased with this situation, and he gritted his teeth that now was when she started looking defensive to her surroundings. He wasn't even sure why he was so frustrated, but he was holding onto it like a lifeline that beat a steady drum in his head, keeping his mind clear from what his eyes were trying to discern as he looked her over with increasing disquiet. She was eyeing him too, but in particular what was in his other hand.

"Give that back," she said suddenly.

He looked down at the little black planner, smoothing his thumb over the leather. He had never touched it before, and it looked even smaller in his hand than in hers, but still a decent size for journaling. He looked back up.

"How about you give me a direct answer first."

She took one more inquisitive look at his face before asking with trepidation, "You... are Sev—Severus? Right?"

He blinked back, pausing. "Did they Confund you? Or cast anything else on you?"

"You mean besides torturing me?" she said indignantly, a haunted shadow passing her eyes for a moment that he recognized all too well in those that had felt the Cruciatus Curse before. "No," she said with dark sarcasm, "that's all, thankfully."

The slowly dawning realization was threatening to roll into his mind like a tidal wave, and he felt like he was still waiting on the far shore for the crash.

"No one can hear us in here," he said, pointing to the door behind without taking his eyes off her, still searching her face in panic. "You could set the whole room ablaze with phoenix fire and they wouldn't be able to detect anything. It's completely safe."

She raised her brows exceptionally high at this, looking between him and the door without much assurance.

"So... So you can stop pretending now," he prompted further, "that you don't know who I am."

He watched with slowly crashing horror as her eyebrows crinkled inward.

"Err... Sorry, but I don't know you."

His shoulders fell as the breath from his lungs was expelled.

"But—you are Sev, right? That's you," she pointed inexplicably from the book to him, and apparently somehow took his look of utter defeat as confirmation. "Well then! I'm here to bring you back."

He blinked listlessly. "Bring me... back?"

"Yes! Well" —she went from confident to deeply confused in a snap— "I'm not exactly sure where... 'back'... is..." Her eyes wandered away to the rest of the room before finding their way back with renewed purpose. "I hadn't read very far into the instructions—if you'd just give me my bloody diary back I could explain it to you."

Her hand reached out to him, palm up, but he was distracted by the simple mistake in her wording, the only thing he would let his brain focus on as it was less harsh than anything else currently swarming around in it.

"This isn't... a diary," he said, wondering if she really hadn't been Confunded. He cautiously held it out, having to dance around her jerking hesitation as she refused to let him get close enough to hand it off, and then finally remembering to just hold still and let her snatch it back. She acted just like the Freya he had first met...

"Um, no," she said indignantly, as if he were the one in the room acting strange. He watched her thumb press over the button latch as he had seen her do a hundred times, and it came undone as easily as always—as it hadn't for Bellatrix. She folded back just the front cover, holding it open and presenting it to him. "It's a diary, see? And this is what I'm doing here."

His feet dragged forward as if his shoes had been turned to lead, not able to keep his mouth from falling open as he read. For he didn't even need to take another step to read what was on the left side, but he did, as if drawn in by the horror of it.

In what looked like golden ink, written in large spikey letters, were the words: " _Find Sev, Bring Him Back._ "

His eyes followed the dragging line from the end of this note, down to the quill tip that had written it; a single small and sad-looking phoenix feather, tipped in dried liquid gold that had seeped into the seam of the book. And to the right of that, starting at the top of the very first page in much plainer black ink:

" _1980-1981_

 _This diary is property of Freya Fawkes._  
_If you are reading this, you are probably Freya Fawkes._  
_If you are reading this and you just woke up in a pile of ash, you are most definitely Freya Fawkes—and I'm sure you are very confused without your memories!  
_ _Here is a quick list of things to keep you alive:_

_1\. Please draw your attention to the left side here for critically important notices. Your life may currently be in danger, or the life of someone you care about._

_2\. Find Albus. He has your memories, and will explain everything. (Don't be difficult, just take them.)_

_3\. You won't get your magic back for about a week—so be careful of dying again! (Additionally, please guard this book with your life! You might not care right now, but_ _you will shortly, I promise!)_

_4\. If you find you are not currently in danger and have a moment, might I suggest starting with your reading of this book? Start at the most recent back entries, in case something important is going on!_

_5\. Your name is_ Fawkes _, by the way! Albus picked it, it's quite nice, isn't it? It's the name of some old nutter wizard who liked exploding things. Also, you should know that most wizards are not fireproof._

 _6\. Please take good care of this diary. (Oops, I added this above as well because I know I'm always a bit reluctant to give a shite about reading these lists very far when I just wake up. But this particular year was very important! Please take care of this book!)_ "

He reread it thrice but the shock still didn't wear off. His eyes did find something more compelling to stare at, however, sliding back over to the left and feeling the gold lettering there burn into his eyes with its frantic, sharply etched lines, in what he knew, but didn't want to know, was not ink.

"See?" she said again, giving him a start as he realized how close she was. His gaze slowly found hers and was held in place as if by the same magic that was sealing the latch of the book. "I told you it's a diary. And you're Sev—Severus, was it? Well, I've found you, and now I need to bring you back." She snapped the book shut and held out her hand as if about to lead him down a merry little path for an adventurous stroll. Her smile faded as he didn't move, and she retracted. "Err... Actually, I haven't the slightest clue where I am, so maybe I should hold off on that for now."

His mind was blank, filled with only a roiling foam as the tidal wave seemed to be endlessly crashing in his head- but the most important thing was now clearly out in the open. There was no more puzzle to sort out here. There was nothing for him to fight against. There was only the cold unyielding written truth.

"You... died?"

She raised her brows and then lowered her gaze to the front of her robes, which she was apparently very aware of being torn in the front, and made his heart give such a sharp jerk his whole torso constricted.

"Um... Yeah, mate, pretty sure I did," she said, casually as if confirming she had accidentally fallen asleep in class. "Woke up sitting in a pile of ash—the whole ordeal." She frowned down at her diary. "Looks like it was one of those quick but painful types of death, too, huh?"

A shudder passed through him.

It didn't matter that she was standing right before him, looking against all the dreary surroundings like the last burning bit of life left in a desolate world, right as rain, yet sunny as ever—because he had really truly done it. He had actually killed her. And, despite everything he wanted to smother this thought with about it just having been a phoenix death, a more horrible reality was burning up his attempts: it hadn't been meaningless, for he hadn't just killed the woman, he had dashed her very memories to bits. The only thing he had been able to still hold onto as precious—all gone.

"And you," he started, and then swallowed, unsure why he was bothering to dare ask, but perhaps needing to torture himself with another cold splash of reality, "you don't... remember me?"

Freya, having been peering through the front pages of the book with a frown on her face, now glanced up at him.

"Of course not," she said casually, unaware of the twitch that crossed his face or the twinge in his chest, "you're a wizard, right? And you... know what I am?" She peered at him curiously, and he remembered after a moment to nod in reaction. "Right," she went on, seeming put off by this, but uninterested enough to continue, "well, we're not meant to remember, are we? Long as we live—we'd go mad with all we see. Dying hundreds of times, feeling others die... It's the trade-off we make for living. Resurrect and wipe the slate clean. We'd hold grudges too, you know, for decades—can't have that. Whole countries would end up getting burnt down if we get mixed up in something; or else we'd get attached and meddle too much in other beings' affairs..."

She squinted back down at the diary with reproach. "Looks like I might have been doing a bit of the latter."

He could have almost laughed at that, if he wasn't so stricken.

She went on, walking around aimlessly in a small circle as she carelessly flipped through the pages.

"Hm... This is quite a bit of cheating I've been doing, eh? 'Phoenix neutrality' my feathered arse," she muttered with a roll of her eyes. "Albus is one thing, but," she flipped to the very back of the book and then forward a few blank pages to one with writing on it, reading aloud in an unaffected tone, "' _I wish I'd been able to see him again—but I can't like this. It just isn't right. Maybe I'm being stupid. Albus is being stupid, too, though. I wish they'd just talk. He said I shouldn't do anything_ —blah blah blah... _I miss him so much_ — _eugh_ —bloody hell, who thinks like this? And just look at all of this!" She fanned through the whole book, which seemed to be hiding a multitude of extra folded in pieces of paper, and too many pages for the size of it as if it were enchanted in some way. "Who writes this much—and about _wizards_? Has nobody ever told me to shut up and get to the point?" She finally turned around and looked at him as if for confirmation that it was indeed ridiculous, but he was quite in another world.

"Could you," he struggled to keep his voice calm, but his question was tumbling out with a bit too much haste, "could you—go back—to where you were just reading from...?"

He watched as her eyes slowly narrowed and the familiar way that her expression closed off as it always had when he'd gone too far with his questions, appearing as closed off as how she now shut the book.

"No," she said with sudden shrewd reservation. "I don't even want to read this; this isn't how it's meant to be." His head hung slightly as his gaze drifted down to the floor. He could just see her boots taking small steps around before she spoke up again, "Is this date correct? Is it really 1981 right now? That means I've been dead for... well, no wait, I've been alive, haven't I? I just... don't remember anything after the first time... How old would that put me at then..."

His mind dredged up the memory, unbidden, and he almost cracked a bitter smile.

"Phoenix years," he said weakly.

He looked up at the sound of a soft derisive snort. She was peering at him in disbelieving amusement, but smoothed over her expression as she was caught.

"Sorry," she said, not able to keep the laughter out of her voice, "just sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?"

As he stared, his head came down in what could have been mistaken for a nod in response, but what was more of an automatic action of his chin as his torso crumpled in on itself in taut anguish. He definitely could not handle getting to hear her laughter again, when she didn't even know—couldn't know, as he was too much of a coward to tell her right now—what he had done. He turned and slowly dragged himself over to the couch against the wall, finally taking a heavy seat.

He really had done it again, hadn't he? Outdone himself, in fact. There had been one person in the whole world left who had tried to reach out to him; who had come to his door while she was busy slowly dying, just out of concern for him; who had been like the last still-burning spark of life left, still stubbornly capable of causing him to feel something despite everything—and he had shut the door on her.

His head fell into his hands as he leaned on his knees, pressing on his eyeballs as he tried to recall exactly what she had said in the snow-covered darkness, comparing it to the words he had just heard read aloud. He couldn't piece much together, the full picture was still lost on him, but if he shoved aside the hard pillars of what he had previously thought were truths, the sentiment to be found there could only be described in one way: that of care. Care for his well-being, which he had always snubbed, hating that someone would seek to disrupt his steady flow of unending self-loathing. Well, now she was certainly nothing but a waterfall adding to that raging current.

"You alright?"

He lifted his head just enough to stare down at his palms, but he couldn't bear to look at her just yet. At least she sounded appropriately detached, or he would have folded like a card. He heard her boots tap across the creaking wood flooring, taking a few steps toward him.

"Err... You know Albus too, right?"

He did meet her eyes at that, only to give her a thoroughly disparaging look, but not explaining further when she only looked confused.

"Right," she said slowly, "well, he's not always the friendly sort. And you know me as well?"

His expression took an even more morose turn and she grimaced.

"Ah... Well, I'm not very friendly, either, I suppose." She sighed, and then attempted a haphazard smile his way, apparently determined to make small talk against the atmosphere of her predicament. "Did you say I was with you and Albus at... at the school?"

He gave up any hope of shaking her off, knowing, despite everything, that this was Freya he was dealing with, and she would just keep talking... as she always had...

"Dumbledore... is the headmaster of Hogwarts school," he said, nodding slowly, as if he himself were remembering this fact through a fog. He was startled out of his gloom by the sudden explosion of excitement before him as Freya practically darted forward.

" _No bloody way!_ You're not lying? _Headmaster?_ " He watched in sheer disbelief as she laughed and clapped. "But—that's amazing! Aw, I always knew he'd be great—that's really fantastic!" Her gaze came back onto him, wide golden eyes sparkling with glee at this news. "Is he—you know—good at it?"

Completely dumbstruck, feeling like he was sinking into a suffocating quicksand at the same time that someone was throwing him a very elaborate Christmas party, he nodded, not even sure what her question had been. She spun around again in an excited swish of robes, not seeming to care how weak his confirmation was.

"Brilliant!" She swiftly reigned herself back in to stand in front of him once more, still eager for more precious information. "And I work for him did you say? How does that work out exactly?"

"You're... undercover... at least to students. Only the other teachers know."

"I see..." She looked pensive for a moment, and he thought he could see a particular displeasure at this news, most likely having to do with her negative thoughts towards wizards; even more negative than the Freya he was familiar with had been. This appeared to be a Freya who was still only friendly with Dumbledore. "And—you're a teacher?" He nodded once. "And... so, Albus must trust you then... and I trusted you to know, too..."

He suddenly felt as if his stomach had sunk several feet, fully through the floor itself.

"Hm... Say, do you know—ah, well..." She gave him a searching look to which he could only blink in response. "You probably don't, but have you ever heard of a man named Gellert Grindelwald? Might have been known for... perhaps... murdering a girl?"

Of all the things she could have said to slap the forming dark grey clouds from his brain, this was certainly a strong act. His eyebrows raised so high it seemed to forcibly wake him up, and he didn't bother lowering them until he had sorted out how to broach this news.

"Try... several... thousand murders."

It was her turn to look thunderstruck, the slow truth of his very serious tone settling in behind her eyes.

"What...? What do you mean?" she asked, with sudden quiet reverence.

"Gellert Grindelwald," he said, his mind picking up the pace as it did what it was so good at and collected the passage from a book he had once read, "one of the most dangerous dark wizards of all time. He's responsible for several... _thousand_ deaths, and attributed to many more, all across Europe from the early 1900s to 1945."

She blinked several times, her gaze traveling far off to the side, until she was fully turning around with it and promptly sat down next to him on the couch.

"Oh."

"Dumbledore defeated him," he said with final assurance to end off the tale for her, taking in her shocked face as she stared out over the room, "in 1945." Which meant, he noted, that her thoughts currently were from a time long before all this. It seemed indeed that she was dragging her mind away from a place that long ago, as her head sluggishly turned towards him.

"Albus did? Wait—so Grindelwald is dead then?"

He frowned, shaking his head. "Prison. In Austria."

"Oh," she frowned too, but it was with a much darker note as the windows behind failed to cast any of their weak light on her furrowed brow. "He didn't kill him? After all that? Good lord, Albus—how soft are you?"

He suddenly was very glad he hadn't told her yet what he himself had done, as this was turning out not be a Freya that he was very familiar with after all.

"How did you know him?" he asked, quickly trying to divert the subject, but she only looked wary and dodged his gaze, shrugging.

"Err... I just... did."

At least she still wasn't very good at lying; that much hadn't changed.

"I..." Her eyes were on her knees, and she seemed to be puzzling through her thoughts. "I asked him... to kill me once. Can't believe he... probably was just some sicko that would have liked it..."

"You... sorry—you asked him to—kill you?" He was blinking rapidly, trying to keep pace with her, but she was not making it easy. He felt like a bystander to her wild private thoughts, and realized he probably was in this situation; the openness of talking to a stranger in a strange situation.

"Well, yeah. Albus," she gave a great sigh, looking up, "really was always soft, I suppose. He wouldn't have done it. I was supposed to be getting close to my first Burning Day—passed due, really, I was nearly two—decades, that is—and I was just..." Her hair fell in a silky sheet as she tilted her head down, blocking his view of her eyes. "Nervous... I suppose. I just wanted it to be over with, quick and painless. Because I knew it was going to be awful. Dying. So slowly, like I had heard it happens." She paused for a long moment, and he almost thought she had finished speaking, but as he didn't have anything he could possibly say, it dragged on long enough for her to continue. "It really was. It took ages. It's the last thing I remember..."

He stared at her in open shock, and she finally turned towards him, raising her brows and straightening her posture as she noticed the concern on his face.

"Oh, but I got better—obviously. Feels _brilliant_ being alive again! Not the being tortured as soon as I woke up bit, though... and I wish I had my magic back..."

It was hard for him to grasp the concept of a Freya that was afraid to die. He had always thought her very cavalier about the whole thing. But as he thought back to the last time it had been brought up, trying to picture what her face had been like, he remembered his own words instead. It had been him that had put out the idea that dying didn't mean that much to her. She had only dodged right over what he'd said really. Well, he was certainly eating those words now, as he found it actually meant a great deal to himself if she died. He had been half right, though; because despite it apparently being difficult for her, from the way she brushed it off now, it really didn't seem to mean much beyond that.

He noticed she was peering at him with a curious expression, almost smirking.

"You wouldn't get it, would you?" she asked with a much more subdued tone. "Never had to die slowly like that, over and over again."

He took a deep breath, keeping his eyes on her face. "Actually... I have. Just once... and it was you who saved me."

This threw her off. "I did? The hell'd I do that for?"

He blinked, drawing a blank. "I... actually have no idea."

He had never been too curious before why she had saved him in particular, or why she had showed up there on that night—apart from rudely telling her off for doing so. It was just something he always considered as some magical annoyance, beyond the trouble of wondering about because it was her that had done it; just some magical creature doing what they did. There had definitely been plenty of times where he had wondered why he still had to remain alive after what he had done, but that was more of a question to the universe than about her.

His eyes dropped down to the little black diary that rested in her lap. She followed his line of sight, and then met his eyes with an unhappy pout. She held her glare in place for a stern moment in which he could practically see the curiosity begin to glisten in her eyes, close as they were, before she heaved a great sigh and stood back up again, cracking the diary open once more.

"When was it?" she said in weary annoyance.

"The 31st of July—but it was late at night. You wouldn't have written it down till the next day."

She flipped through the pages and then paused. "Hmm... You're wrong about that one... 31st of July, just before midnight..."

His heartbeat suddenly jumped up from where it had been swirling around the drain somewhere in his gut, watching her flowing hair as she slowly stepped away, her back to him as she read. He could just barely recall his memory of that hair brushing the ground at his side as he lay flat on his back... But she stopped abruptly, turning around.

"Who... in the hell is 'Voldemort'?"

Several moments of explanation later, he was sitting quite still, grimacing down at the wood flooring, quite glad for his enchantments against sound traveling from the room.

" _TWO_? Bloody— _TWO of them_? Two of the darkest wizards— _of all time_ —in just _one century_? Are you _joking_ me—can you lot not stop killing each other for _one—bleeding_ — _decade_?"

"Sorry," he mumbled to the floorboards, bearing the brunt of the entire wizarding population and the general humankind's greatest faults on his stiff shoulders.

She blew out a long puff of air, letting her pop of anger deflate and turning back to the diary, still shaking her head and muttering, " _Wizards_ ," in a way which he found distinctly non-friendly towards the bright future of intra-being alliances—but he was no expert.

It took a long time for her to finish reading, and when at first he thought she had, she merely turned the page while peering his way—and then went right back to reading even more. The time it was taking only gave his mind more room to come up with everything that could be contained—and it was looking like quite a lot was contained, in fact—in Freya Fawkes diary about the night of the fall of the Dark Lord; the night that she had appear in a particular wood, to save a particular Death Eater, who had been plenty ready for death at the time.

In all honesty, he probably should not have been so eager to encourage her to find out about this date. It could only hold the truth of what she really thought of him—whether irredeemable monster, or a pathetic and pitiable man. It was a bit better, at least, than having to tell her what else he had done, and a far cry better than having to utter it himself. Perhaps it could prepare her for it, and it wouldn't be as surprising if she knew he was already like this...

When she finally finished at last, he saw her dogear the page she had been reading before closing up the book, as she turned back towards him, looking at him as if she had just noticed a brand-new stranger in the room. He held his breath, but she only took in a deep steadying one of her own, blinking the expression from her face and coming back to the sofa to calmly retake her seat.

"Hm..."

 _That's it?_ he thought, _'Hm'?_

"That was... very interesting," she said in a thoughtful tone, not even looking at him and his considerable disappointment, but out at the rest of the room.

"Care to share with the class?" he asked, his sardonic nature coming back out. But with one penetrating look from her as she turned her head, he no longer felt as carefree to be making such requests.

She didn't answer out loud at all, but as their eyes stayed locked on each other, he made desperate attempts to search for the truth behind her enigmatic expression. Until he determined that whatever it was in her mind, whatever was written in her diary, he didn't want to know. He didn't deserve to know, anyway, as his gaze shifted down to her neck and the still open horizontal slit at the top of her robes. His head snapped away. But his newfound propensity for spontaneous ill-advised ideas got the better of him once more, and he turned back, taking a second to study her mood first before he spoke.

"I could mend that for you," he said, directing a curt nod to her robes and making her look down at the damage. "I think—that your robes are probably enchanted—you transform in them, so it's likely. I can't mend already magically enhanced fabrics perfectly, but, seeing as you haven't any magic at all—I—" Her eyes came slowly back up to him, her eyebrows steadily raising with considerable surprise at how much he was suddenly talking. He blinked, trying to pick up the thread of what he was going on about and finishing quite lamely with, "I could... fix it."

 _You can't fix everything, though, can you?_ He felt his gaze soften just a bit.

"Um," she suddenly looked quite like the Freya he was used to, with all of her sheepishness, "could you... do it from other there?" She winced apologetically as she leaned more towards her end of the couch, but he wasn't at all surprised by this, nor offended. He was already taking out his wand and angling himself towards her. A brief second passed where he remembered vividly the last time he had raised his wand to her, and that he had thought he had already promised himself never to again—but he shook it off. This was just the one pathetically small thing he could do. With a careful wave, and as she held very still, looking extremely uncomfortable about this whole ordeal, he quickly sent a stitch of thread looping through and tugging the fabric together. It wasn't very pretty—and after looking down to inspect it, she gave him a rather withering look—but she smoothed her hand over the makeshift mending appreciatively all the same, mumbling her thanks.

It wasn't exactly a turn back in time, to before he had caused the tear in the first place, but at least sewing magic was real and applicable, whereas there was nothing of this world to undo the past, no matter how much he wished.

"Err... Sev, right?"

His face twitched before he could help it, and he opened his mouth to correct her. But it wasn't as if it really mattered at this point what she called him, and it wasn't really fair considering she could understand even less about it now. He finally closed his lips and conceded with an irritable nod to have the nickname brought back into his life after making him wince for so many years.

Freya now seemed torn by his reaction, though. "Err... Sev... Severus... Does anyone ever call you Rus? Sevvy?"

"Just—get on with it," he prompted, holding his eyes closed.

"Alright, sorry," she said as she suppressed a soft laugh. It was ridiculous that she could be so relaxed, and it only made him painfully aware that she had just always been like this; not just because she had been warming up to him to get information, but because she was seemingly just... overly friendly by default. "I was just wondering," she continued in the same casual voice, tucking her hair behind her ear as she leaned towards him, "do you know how I got this?"

His heart dropped—as did his eyes, fixed to where she was pointing at the stitchwork he had just made—and then his heart began to beat wildly. He blinked to stop the blur that was threatening to fully overtake his tunneled vision, and quickly looked away. Her eyes were still on him though; he could just see her face from the corner of his eye and through a part in the black hair hanging at his cheek.

"I assume it's how I died," she went on, sounding more and more unsure after his reaction, "but there's nothing written about some psycho murdering me—so does that mean everything's alright then?"

He held tight the muscles of his chest, not letting his lungs take in any more air as his mind raced. She was going to find out eventually, she had to. He couldn't lie to her, not about this. He had already let it go on for far too long. It had been like a sweet reprieve from everything he had done—only to come crashing in around him, tenfold, after learning what he had.

Freya was still attempting to break his silence, continuing on, "Because... I've been thinking... I know I was supposed to come find you and bring you back, but... I was picturing you being in some danger or something. But you seem to have that lot out there sorted. You don't look like you're in danger here, so much as... maybe not like the rest?"

His face pulled into a grimace. He felt very much at home here, right where he belonged, in among the soulless types. He wished she would just figure it out herself, so he wouldn't have to say it out loud... She would surely see the guilt, plain as day on his face, and know; if he just lifted his head and turned towards her...

"But..." He watched her eyes thoroughly look him over, narrowing as she lingered on his weary expression when, finally, he showed his face. "But... could it have been perhaps that I meant... 'bring back'... as in... another way...?"

He couldn't tell if she was leaning more towards 'in handcuffs' or 'in a body bag,' but either way, it was looking like her earlier seemingly envisioned merry stroll home was being swept off the table.

How many years had he spent on training himself to perfectly control his face? Certainly so many that he had moved on to doing the same for his mind. And in that current moment, it was all he could do to force himself not to hide any single scrap of what he was feeling, letting his guilt show as transparently as he could, practically begging her to be the one to say it so he didn't have to.

But no words escaped her lips just then, only parting to suck in a breath before she leapt up, backing several feet away.

Any apology he could have uttered died in his throat, as he wouldn't let himself say something so pointless when it changed nothing, but still he felt his chest tight to bursting with the urge to find anything at all to say.

"I'm..."

" _You?_ " she interjected, raising a finger at him that his eyes locked onto as if it were a wand marking him for death. " _You_ — _killed me?_ "

He was still struggling with the lump in his throat, but he tried to at least respond, in whatever would come out.

"I'm—I didn't... mean to..."

She drew herself up straight, her shoulders raising as she stared down at him, incredulous. " _Didn't_ — _mean to_ —? Oh, we'll see about that," she shot back, and his heart jerked in alarm. She seemed to be steadying her breathing, composing herself, and he suddenly found his voice very quickly.

"You—You don't have your magic," he said, standing up as if he could do something physically to stop what was happening, or perhaps prepare himself to leap from the window.

Her eyes stared back at him with a hardness he had seen there before, but now with a much more intimidating, much more full-of-life face.

"I have everything a phoenix needs."

The age worn paper bearing Kiaran James's paragraph of notes flashed into his mind.

" _Don't!_ " He rushed forward before he knew what he was doing, raising his hands as if he could somehow calm the air from allowing her to sing into it. "Please—don't—I didn't mean to, I _swear I didn't_."

She narrowed her eyes, but held her silence. He went on in a rush, grasping at the only fleeting opportunity he had.

"I didn't mean to—it was an accident—we were fighting," he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, remembering just how stupid and pointless his reasoning was, "and you... you were already dying. I'm willing to bet that... you didn't even have your magic then, did you?" She didn't answer or change her expression, but he continued, trying to make it make sense to himself as much as to her. "You tricked me into attacking you—I have no clue why—just to upset me? You were trying to stop me from leaving, and I wouldn't listen, and I..."

He took a stuttering breath, unable to look into her eyes, instead staring at every neat little stitch he had put in the slash across her robes. So pointless, so stupid.

"I... killed you."

After a long moment during which he only heard the sound of his own heart beating uncomfortably in his chest, feeling like it might be trying to escape being contained in such a worthless person, the stitching his stare was glued to shifted before his eyes, replaced by a wary golden gaze as Freya stepped forward.

He didn't realize he had more left in him to freeze, but he stood so still, trapped under her searching look, that his lungs eventually had to wrest back control from his panicking brain.

She came right up to him, almost in a way he had seen her do before, not in a snowy wood, but in a library, and much more slowly. He thought for sure she was about to raise a finger pointed at his heart and make it flip over, but she only continued to peer into his eyes in a way that made him want to turn his face away.

And then she did turn her attention directly to his chest, making him flinch. Her eyes flicked back up to his face, and then over the rest of him. Finally, she scrunched up her face... and took a small step back.

"I... believe you," she said slowly, not freeing him from being pinned under her eyes, but softening just a bit. "We're not exactly the type to fight, but... we'll damn make sure that you feel it the next day. And—guess I already told you this, but—I'd much rather go out by the steady hand of someone I know if I was dying." She nodded slowly, letting out a small unhappy laugh as she went on. "Yep, it definitely sounds on brand for a cruel type of phoenix trick. We've got a bit of a _flare_ for the dramatic."

His body seemed to come to life only to feel even more statuesque in place.

"You... must be joking," he said, his voice so low it was barely more than a breath, "you are not making fire puns after I just told you that I murdered you..." She pulled a face, waving him off with an unaffected shrug, making his jaw drop. "I—… I _slashed your throat._ " Her comically casual face dropped into one just as unserious as she placed a hand over her stitched-up robes like they were pearls.

"Alright, well, hold off on the theatrics next time," she said in mock offense. "Simple killing curse will do it; or just about anything, we're very fragile when we're dying."

"But... But you _can't_ —then why did you— _I killed you_ ," he said more loudly in case she hadn't yet picked up on this fact, wanting to grab her by the shoulders because she was being insane. Either that, or he was going insane. There was definitely some kind of curse of insanity somewhere in this building.

He watched her expression slowly melt its mask of humor away, to be replaced instead with one that didn't give him any more consolation. She leveled at him a sad grimace, seemingly more pained by how upset he was than this news of what he had told her. If he didn't know any better, and if he could dare to believe it, he'd have thought she looked apologetic. Almost the same as she had looked before he attacked her—and her last words jumped into his mind; her apology for what she was about to do.

He could only blink in stunned astonishment as she shook her head and sighed, stepping forward.

"No... I'm right here," she said, brightening her apprehensive smile up at him and rendering him quite mute from making any arguments. It was her that touched his shoulder then, giving him a tap on the arm as if he were the one that needed the physical pull back to reality. "Don't look so worried; no harm done, yeah?" A fleeting spark came up in his mind at her words, but was gone before he could fully discern it as he raced to get out a rebuttal before he lost his nerve.

"But—you can't just forgive something like this," he said, his voice much more gravely serious than her lackadaisical tone. "I... you just... you _can't._ " He almost felt like he was convincing himself at this point, as his words were only getting a raised eyebrow from her.

"Look," she went on, as if patiently explaining something to a student, "dying is... just... it's a part of life. And I told you, we don't remember death for a reason. If we built up years of just being terrified of the next death, over and over, taking each one to heart, revenge, wallowing, all of that—well, that's no way to live what life we do get, is it? And by your telling of it, I went into it willingly enough, knowing that I might die."

Quite far from finding this the least bit comforting, he gazed horrified down into her pure golden eyes, holding none of the reproach that he would have expected—that had just been there moments before, he was sure of it. That was how she should be reacting. Because there was no way she could have known he would attack her with something that might kill her, surely. Just that it had been an option. One that he had, so carelessly, taken.

It hardly seemed to matter what she said, as his heart stayed firmly hardened in his chest, in denial of this joke that was being played on him.

"You... said right before it," he murmured, remembering more of her words, "that you didn't play fair. You warned me..."

Her eyebrows bounced up and she did something terrible then—as her smile split fully into a laugh, so close that he felt as if it was sending shockwaves through the feet of air between them.

"And yet you _still_ ," she said incredulously amused, "you _still_ raised your wand to me? To a phoenix? Oh, you're not evil—just an absolute idiot." She covered her mouth and then clamped the other hand over the first at the look on his face, her eyes betraying her glee through the guilt. "Sorry, sorry," she said when she had smoothed over her smile, seemingly doing nothing to effect it, "it's really not funny; shouldn't laugh." Hearing her laugh, he almost felt some part of him return to normal, as a dark glower that he reserved mostly for reactions to this specific woman shadowed his features. She scrunched up her nose, still smiling, but trying with more success to look apologetic.

"Ah... Really, I am sorry," she said with actual sincerity, raking her fingers through her hair. He was distracted from the minor thing that she was supposedly apologizing for as her much more devastating apology echoed in his mind again, and he was forced to accept that, by combination of the look on her face then with her current expression, she really, truly was. It didn't mean that he would ever accept it, though. Her forgiveness was not a medicine that he, at all, in any inch of him, felt deserving of. She shouldn't be apologizing at all, ever, and he wanted to force her words out of the air.

Her shoulders lifted with a heavy sigh, and she at last appeared to be contemplating the situation seriously as he remained resolutely morose.

"This... This really was some old age phoenix lesson type shite—I'm not personally a fan; can't believe I did that, to be honest; I'd've just torched you—but, well, maybe I don't know myself... Ah, anyway," she gave a shake of her head as if to clear it, "it seems like I did it for a reason, yes? I doubt it was just to make you upset... More likely to stop you, like you say. I'm guessing if I knew _this_ is where you were going, with that lot out there," she jerked her head towards the door and took a wide disparaging look around the room, "then it was to try and make you see that you're not fit to be here."

He frowned, but she turned on him with a face so set in sudden earnest determination, he remained quiet.

"That's what it's meant to do when we fight back. Normally, the type of people who would attack a phoenix in our other form, they'd need to hear phoenix song to force them to remember their humanity—to feel guilt—but if you've already got it in you... Well..." She gestured with a nod to his chest and his gaze snapped down as if about to find some giant spider there- but when he looked up, she was only grinning at him.

He couldn't take it anymore. All this allusion and pointed references, and no straight answer. If she was really going to talk about where he belonged in the world, what kind of person he was, and act as if he hadn't done anything that impressive, he had to just come out with it and ask her straight—because he was sure he already knew exactly who he was.

"You..." He had to swallow and work his jaw around as he tried to feel out the right words, but he was so desperate at this point, and had already made such a fool of himself already, he almost felt free to just blurt out anything now. "You can see my—my soul, can't you?" Her smile, that had been slowly diminishing as her brows knit curiously at his attempts to speak, fell fully from her face; but he persisted. "Could you—please—just tell me—how... how bad I've messed things up?"

By the look on her face, she was getting her own taste of feeling like the sanity in the room had fled somewhere far without her having noticed. She gave him such a concerned look up and down, he almost started to think perhaps it was just that it had been such a stupid question because the answer should be obvious. He watched her lips part to speak, but she didn't seem to trust her words.

Instead, she came forward; cautiously, as if he were a dilapidated building that might cave in if she wasn't careful. He was grateful for this at least, because he did indeed feel that whatever she had to say would have him fall to the ground, it was only a matter of which side he would lean towards.

He saw her hand start to reach up and glanced down, thinking she was about to do her trick of making his heart flip over like a trained pet, but he brought his gaze back up, wanting to look into her eyes for what she had to say.

"I... I can't tell you that," she said softly, and he felt his shoulders diminish with the disappointment—but she shook her head and went on further. "I mean, that's not something for me to say." He felt her hand come to rest on his arm and he flinched, making her hand retract and hesitate a second. This Freya couldn't know, but his left forearm that she now decisively wrapped her hand around in what was meant to be a steadying gesture, held beneath the fabric of his robes something that he didn't think would have mixed well with the type of magic that seemed to radiate from the palm of her hand straight through to his skin. Only her fingertips were touching his inner forearm, but still he felt his heart beating faster.

Her eyes were on his, though, and he couldn't look away. With her face so close and her expression so adamantly full of concern, as if willing him to heed her words—she looked up at him as if she knew exactly just who he was.

"Though I will say this," she began, and his breath caught because it was the same smooth warm voice that he was used to hearing so rarely from her, not the unaffected one she had been speaking with. "Really... don't worry about that, Severus. You're safe and sound. Alright?"

And suddenly, he remembered where he had heard her say these words before, and the others he had recognized from earlier but not had the place in his mind to pin them to.

She had said this to him afterward, on the night that he had first raised his wand to her to much less grave effect. And he had thought then that she would be running up the dungeon stairs, to Dumbledore, to have him sent straight to Azkaban—but she had only told him this very thing. And he had never been directly punished for it. Not in four months. He had just been charmingly forgiven, and she had gone right along with pestering him, following him, and cheering him up when he was locked inside his mind...

He could have almost cried. If he had been the type, he would have, but even so, he felt the pull of emotion tug at his face, and had to watch her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Her hand dropped its grip on him, but instead of being let loose from his anchor, both his arms now received a thorough patting.

"A-Alright, alright," she said awkwardly with a weak laugh. "You're fine, really, you're alright."

This was a most conflicting predicament, because while he wanted to roughly brush off this unwelcome and very open acknowledgement of his status, he was, without a doubt, not alright at all. And each time her hands touched him, and with her so close, he only felt a warmth that he suddenly couldn't stand to not reach out for more of...

"Oh! No, no, no— _no_." He felt her hands come up to push him off, but it was too late, as his arms had already wrapped fully around her, and there was no way for him to undo what he had done after getting a chance to experience how good it felt. The rest of her words were muffled, delivered straight into his chest, and he could somehow feel her voice as a physical force. "This is not—I don't do the hugging thing—this—just—are you _sure_ we aren't friends or—"

"I'm sorry," he whispered in a breath that emptied his lungs and made her go quiet. He had his eyes squeezed shut, because he didn't want to see just her auburn hair from the back and let his stupid brain get it mixed up this time. He meant it only for her. The only living person he could apologize to, and deserved his full undivided remorse. "I'm so sorry."

Even though he had tried his best to hold back and not fully bother her by his display, he could still somehow feel her slowly breathing against him; in all the smaller ways they were touching, the near imperceptible rise and fall of her shoulders, and the soft sound of it close enough to reach his ear. The second in which he had been sure he should have let go of her by now passed by, but he was held back as he felt her hesitantly raise her hand. The same warmth that he was clinging to was pressed lightly to his back, and she gave him another couple of pats.

"Um... I'm really glad you're alright," she murmured into his shoulder, "but... could you... get the hell off me now?"

"Ye— _Sorry_ —" He let go and backed up at once, his hand coming up to smooth his brow, half-hiding face. "Sorry," he said again, getting just a peek of her stunned—and bemused—face and closing his eyes as he tried to not so awkwardly turn away to hide his embarrassment. "Very... sorry..."

He heard her give a short laugh that made his brows crinkle downward, but her voice when she spoke up again wasn't unkind.

"It's... alright. Just a personal thing, I guess. I don't really even like crowds, actually—"

"I know," he said with a bit too much snappishness, making him sheepishly turn back towards her again just to show he hadn't meant it rudely. "It's—I'm sorry. But I already know."

Her eyes blinked wide at him, but she didn't seem to have anything she could say about this. He didn't know himself what to say. It was such an odd situation to be standing in; where she didn't even recognize him, or know that he had put his arms around her in quite a bit of a friendlier way not too long ago, or that she had been the one to initiate it—he thought, anyway. He still felt like he was standing on shaky ground, on so many things, and now he just felt... exhausted.

"I... haven't slept," he said almost defensively, and his heavy voice backed up his words, "in over... in a while." The few times his eyes had closed early that morning, they had merely snapped back open in blind panic, as he kept forgetting he wasn't in his comfortable Hogwarts bed and didn't fully trust his surroundings; and then he would remember what he was doing there and toss and turn all over again.

Her voice suddenly sounded alarmed. "You're not going to turn in _now_ , are you? We still have to go back—'back' should mean to the school, right? To Albus?"

He stared at her, frozen in astonishment.

"I can't travel on my own," she continued with rising concern, "I haven't got my magic. And I don't know where we are, or where Hogwarts is. I'm guessing it's not just around the bend."

His eyes darted away, his mind racing, but he couldn't exactly say he was keeping her trapped here, or deny her any help since he was at fault for all of this. Nor could he agree to go throw himself within spell range of Albus Dumbledore at the moment.

His head felt so heavy under the weight of everything, under the entire past week, month, year... He sorely regretted not sleeping before slipping out of the castle.

"Could we," he began, trying his best not to sound like he was whining or dodging her, "perhaps just... discuss it in the morning?" He really did want to help, and to sort everything out, and make everything fixed properly again—but not all in one day.

When he peeked back at her, she was standing with her arms crossed, looking distinctly as if she had just figured out that her departure from this predicament rested upon the shoulders of someone who was getting tired before the sun had even fully gone down. It _was_ getting darker in the room, the cracks of light peeking from behind the thick curtains growing dimmer, but he didn't think it apt to point this out to her at the moment.

"Oh—go to sleep then," she snapped, turning away. "Me, I think I'll have a walk around—"

"No," he said hastily, darting after her as she walked towards the door and making her turn around in surprise. "You can't. You... The people here are not exactly..."

She blinked at him. "What—they're going to tear me apart or something?"

He winced at the imagery, but it wasn't far off the mark. "As you've said, you don't have any magic. And in case you really weren't paying attention..."

Her head bobbed back as she seemed to remember. She really had been barely aware during that situation, it seemed. "Right... I'm cursed or something. Puppet girlfriend, was it?"

"You're—not a puppet," he said, the defense in his voice reminding him of her own hatred of the word 'pet' as much as anything he was refuting as his eyes darted away.

She sighed. "Well, brilliant. Guess it's a nap for me too, then."

He stared at her; and then out at the room behind him, with only the fainting couch, a couple sets of drawers, a wardrobe, and a large bed.

"What— _here_?"

She stared back up at him, her mouth hanging open. "Will you make up your mind? Look, I'm just going on the couch then."

He watched her go right over to it and sit down—and then hop back up as she had sat on the diary she had abandoned there earlier.

"Oi—can't you light a candle or something?"

He paused, and then said quietly, "What's wrong, haven't got a match?" Her glare wasn't as visible through the darkness at a distance, but he could imagine it well enough. He took out his wand and lit the oil lamp by the bed.

"Well, that's not really helpful, now, is it?"

But he was already walking towards her on the couch and nodded his head in the direction of the bed. "You're fine to take that. I'll sleep here."

Her eyes widened at him as she looked up from the diary she had already cracked open. She raised it in her hands. "Oh, I'll... just be reading, I don't need the bed."

He stared at the ugly wallpaper as he tongued the inside of his cheek. "Just take it." When she still didn't move, he let out a quiet sigh and tried again, this time looking her in the face. "You'll have to sleep eventually. It's fine. Move."

"Oh, well since you asked so nicely," she said with sweetest sarcasm.

But she did get up and cross to the far side of the room with the little light glowing in the corner, staring over her shoulder at him as he took the empty seat on the couch.

He held in another sigh as he felt the worn-down cushion, but he would be damned if he was about to be less than perfectly polite to the woman. Not counting grabbing her and practically having a meltdown on her shoulder—but he shoved this very vivid embarrassment out of his mind as he laid down. His brain couldn't handle anything else at the moment.

Trying to get comfortable, not even bothering to take his boots off and wishing he had grabbed his cloak for a blanket before committing to this sleeping arrangement, he finally settled in to get the sleep that he so desperately needed. And, hopefully, it would this time, at last, be sound.

—

He was lying flat on his back, staring up at the overhead branches of the forest with unseeing eyes, blinded from more than just pain.

So, this was where he was going to die.

His brain kept making feeble little attempts to remind me of every spell that could help in this scenario; every little bit of healing magic, a way to signal for help, or even just muggle strategies to survive life-threatening situations.

But there was no one around to help, and he wasn't sure where his wand had ended up. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, but it was empty.

And, much more importantly, he did not particularly want any help. Nor did he want to stop the blood he could feel draining out of his back, making the trees above sway, though he was distantly aware that there was no wind tonight. Unfortunate, as it might have felt good to get a breeze to cool the July air.

It did hurt incredibly, though, and he wished that he could have died more peacefully. He supposed it just wasn't in the stars for someone like him, however. This was the death he deserved.

He probably never should have been born in the first place.

The pattern on the muggle ice pack his father had tried to give him after a certain night rose to his mind, the little red cross that had been on it leading his mind further down a path towards how to properly apply pressure to an open wound and staunch the bleeding without magic—but he turned this thought down, just as he had turned bitterly away from the held-out ice pack.

He shouldn't have ever come here. Not to this forest, nor to the mansion—not on this night, or any other night. He likewise shouldn't—definitely should not, _ever_ —have gone to Godric's Hollow.

His eyes fell closed, willing the image that was burned there to leave him alone. If he was going to die, he would allow himself one last selfish wish—that he wouldn't have to be picturing her the way he had just witnessed as he passed. He at least wanted to remember her happy.

Even though it was him that had ripped every bit, every chance, of happiness away from her.

The wound in his torso seared in pain as his lungs contracted with a dry sob. The trees suddenly looked much more blurry than before.

If he hadn't been in such a blind rage, or perhaps if he hadn't been slightly wishing for this outcome, he might have seen that the spell the unknown masked Death Eater had cast hadn't missed him, but had been purposefully aimed behind him, transfiguring a low branch into something sharp that had pierced straight through before he had ever even seen it. That's when his wand had fallen out of his hand, he now remembered, as he had clutched frantically at his chest, pulling his hand away when it felt wet. And he had heard the man Disapperate shortly after.

He didn't know what he had been thinking. He hadn't been, really. There had just been no one else around to take out his aggression. The person he had come back here asking about was gone, sending all his followers scrambling out of their nests- to other nests, back and forth- in a frantic hunt for answers as to where their Dark Marks had suddenly disappeared to, leaving behind just ugly scars on all their arms.

And the random masked man he had run into in the woods, while he was alone trying to contact someone else, had just been a target for his broken nerves to crack his wand at with automatic aggression. It helped that the man had seen the very obvious, almost glowing in the darkness, golden feather that he had pulled from his robes. In such chaos, the impulse to hide his allegiances hardly seemed rational any longer, but still, it would have been bad to be caught.

It would have been. But thankfully, he would never have to deal with that now.

This did remind him, however, that he still had something on his person.

His whole arm shook with the effort as he reached into the deepest pocket on the inside of his robes, pulling out the last resort device of communication that had been given to him months ago.

He had already attempted using it as instructed, before the Death Eater had interrupted him moments ago, but no one had come, and it didn't seem likely that they would. Albus Dumbledore no doubt had other things to attend to at the moment, such as why the Dark Lord had just seemingly vanished from this earth, and why it had taken the deaths of two of his own members to accomplish this feat. And Severus supposed he had already gotten out all he could as far as throwing himself around in a rage. He had wanted to scream his questions at Dumbledore himself, ask him what had gone wrong, maybe so foolishly raise his wand to him as well—but it didn't matter now.

He wished the scar on the inside of his forearm had gone completely. He wished he had the strength to throw the phoenix feather far away from him, too. He didn't want to go out with any allegiances. He was so sick and tired of sides, of lies, and of fighting. There was only one person that he wished he had remained loyal to, above all else; and wished that he hadn't waited so long to do it, so that it had to be in the shadows of darkness, under cover of many masks.

He wished he could have just seen her happy one more time.

As his consciousness ebbed and his vision grew so clouded that it was pointless to keep his eyes open, he finally let them close, and listened to the sounds of the still July forest, trying to remember different July evenings, underneath different trees, his heart wresting away some of the pain from just his physical wounds.

It was with such a sluggish realization when he felt the warm weight on his hand that lay on his chest, that he almost didn't react at first. But his palm was squeezed tightly, rudely dragging his mind back to the pain of reality, and he had to crack his eyes open once more.

And then, with such a sharp inhale that his eyes watered from the pain, he realized he must have already died. Because there, leaning over him, was some sort of angelic version of the woman he was trying to picture happy and alive. He wished immediately that she wasn't so obviously dead—because no living creature could glow as she did in the dark like that—though perhaps it was his fading vision, looking like the very trees in their blackness were curling into the edges of his eyes.

But he was sure of it, that it was her before him, and she had come to help him pass on.

It didn't feel very good though, to die. He was suddenly growing more and more aware of a thrum of sound, seemingly coming from inside his ears, his head, his chest. It made him gasp from the pain of it, but she leaned down closer to his face and he got a better view.

She was crying. He couldn't get his eyes to bring more than the tip of her nose into focus, but large teardrops were falling straight from her face onto his chest, and he could hear her sobbing. He wished with all his might he could do something to help her... but she was probably crying because of what he'd done. And he could do nothing about that. He was going to die guilty, weak, and foolish. Branded even in death with the path he had decided on long ago, that had taken him so far from her.

He tried to get his mouth to work, to speak. She seemed to hear him, though his moving lips weren't saying anything, and he couldn't hear himself even when he did make sound with his head so full of the rising choral music. But she leaned in expectantly, and he focused to get it out.

" _I'm... sorry..._ "

He felt a wet droplet splash onto his cheek as she turned to look into his eyes. He was confused, because her own eyes were all wrong—but maybe that's just what happened when you died. And besides, his eyes were overflowing with tears as well, and he couldn't get a clear picture, as much as he wanted to.

" _Please_ ," he whispered again, " _please don't stop... singing... It's beautiful..._ "

It felt like the music itself, the pain of dying, and of a love that he was so undeserving of, was both ripping him apart and putting him back together again, continually. But he didn't want it to stop, because he somehow knew that if it did, he wouldn't be able to see her again.

" _Promise me..._ "

And then his mind seemed to swim and mix together till he could no longer tell if he was seeing or hearing, thinking or feeling- and then it didn't matter anymore, as everything merged into the same still, infinite black.

—

He woke with a start, unsure why at first, but holding quite still in the darkness as his brain tried to rush to the same wakefulness that his body had.

Blinking slowly, his eyes barely open, he thought at first he was still wrapped up in his dream—because a very similar image was before him.

His brow raised, pulling open his eyes so he could better see.

The only real light was a cold grey glow that must have been moonlight bouncing off the snow through the windows along the wall behind him.

But there was another, more ethereal glow in front of him, blocking his horizontal view of the room. The golden glow shifted a beautiful shimmering display as Freya tilted her head to the side, her cheek resting onto her arms folded beneath her head, matching his sideways gaze.

And then he jerked his head back, hitting it hard into the sturdy backboard of the couch and slapping a hand up over the sudden painful bump.

"Ouch, that had to hurt... Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

He blinked in annoyance, mussing his fingers through his rumpled hair and shooting a very deadly looking half-awake glare at her. She set her head back up straight on her chin and smiled pleasantly back.

"What—" His voice came out thick with sleep so that he stopped his attempt and stretched his jaw instead, forcing on a yawn that he ducked his face under the blankets to cover. Blinking as he resurfaced, realizing he hadn't gone to sleep with a blanket, he changed up his original question. "What... What is this?" He looked down stupidly as if there might be something else down the length of his body besides more blanket, but he only discovered that he was tucked in quite snugly to the couch—and the bed in the distance was bare.

"You looked cold," came the quiet voice beside his head, making him look back up to see her calm face still watching him. She was just barely a foot away from his face, leaning on the couch, her lower body not visible to him, but he couldn't imagine she was much warmer if she was sitting on the bare floor. He let his head fall back to rest on his pillow—and then belatedly gave another start, looking from what was beneath his head, to her, and back again, when he realized he hadn't fallen asleep with a pillow. But she spoke again before he could inquire further. "And you..." Her eyes drifted away, and he was too drowsy to interpret her expression, especially while it was currently at the opposite angle of his view.

"What time is it?" he asked in the pause, still blinking and trying to make himself wake up fully given that he wasn't alone here. But he was quite warm, and feeling better rested than he had in longer than he could remember, making him rather reluctant to leave his cozy accommodations.

She shrugged, whispering back, "Dunno. It's been a few hours, though. I've gotten tired myself."

"Have you just... been sitting here?" He narrowed his already half-lidded eyes. "Watching me sleep?"

Her laugh was so quiet it hardly seemed to escape her lips, but yet he somehow still heard it so close with his ear to the furniture that her chest was resting against.

"Don't be full of yourself," she said, and her voice rose just enough above a whisper that the lowest note came through in a much stronger way to his ears. He thought he might still be imagining he was hearing music in his drowsy state. "I've just been... reading."

He took in a deeper breath than necessary, remembering that he had left her alone with the diary. And remembering that this wasn't quite the regular Freya that he was talking to, though she had her exact face and voice, and was looking at him quite like Freya might in the later hours of grading periods in the secluded little nook of the research library at Hogwarts. But, while she might not remember, she had been reading the very memories that had been recorded at that time, and possibly of those very things he was remembering.

"Do you," he swallowed to clear his throat, and to give his sleepy mind time to catch up with what his mouth was trying to ask before it could even come up with the words, "I mean, did you... read anything interesting?"

He watched, both of them completely silent in the darkness, as she stayed as still as him for several seconds, and then slowly turned her head to the side again to look at him from the same horizontal plane. He didn't see how it was possible that her eyes could pick up enough of the low light in the room to slow the slightest hint of color that they did, but he soaked in every tiny facet that he could see reflected, realizing he had never actually gotten a chance to openly stare at her before. Even when they were talking, she was always moving around, laughing, rolling her eyes... but now, making him wish there was a light on somewhere nearby, she was so close and relaxed, only moving to make a small adjustment to the way her cheek was pressed into her arm.

"Yes."

He blinked, unsure what she meant at first, and then slowly remembered he had asked her a question. His heart suddenly seemed to realize that he was just lying there calmly, unaware of how exposed he was and that he should be moving to perhaps sit up or something. He wasn't exposed, he was perfectly covered up in blankets, in fact, but he couldn't help the way he all of a sudden felt rather pinned in place to the couch. His openly staring eyes also caught up to the rest of his brain that realized this might be rude, and he looked away, feeling that it might be too late since he also hadn't been hiding his expression of dazed awe, either.

Also, he was talking to someone whom he had just fatally attacked 24 hours ago.

He all at once felt very awake.

"What—did you—find that was interesting?" he asked, mostly to fill the silence.

His eyes flicked back to her face at increasing intervals as she didn't answer for a while. He watched her lips slowly parting and closing, trying to say whatever it was—but eventually she just frowned, and he saw some undefinable note of change to her expression.

"Um... I read that," she started, her voice sounding almost higher, "you're rather... awful at cutting your breakfast muffins in half."

He blinked one last languid time; and then brought his brows down in a knot.

She pursed her lips over her grin. "And you butter rather aggressively, too."

His mouth pulled into a wide unamused frown. "This has... all been one big joke, hasn't it? You haven't lost your memories at all, have you?"

She laughed in a way that crinkled her cheeks up to her eyes so much that she had to turn her face as half of it was pressed too tight against her arm. "No, really—I swear that's what's written in there."

"You... are... lying," he enunciated in his sleepy monotone voice. "There is no way someone— _anyone_ —bothered to write down my..." He didn't even bother to finish his sentence it sounded so ridiculous, instead rolling his eyes so hard that he had to bring a hand up to rub them, as they hadn't been prepared for the motion. She _would_ be that petty to write something like that down. And... he would be as petty as to have been taking extra care as of late to cut his muffins into perfect halves; though she wouldn't know this, as she hadn't been eating meals with him in so long, and he had never done it around her.

Rolling till he was halfway on his back, mostly to give him room from her barely covered-up laughter, still with his eyes closed and rubbing his temples now, he went on, "You know... there's a war ending... there's—you're a teacher, and..." He couldn't even come up with all the things more important than how he buttered his muffins. "There are people dying all over the world," he said at last, with zero concern except to mock what her own had been when she had said this to him. Unbeknownst to her, she was now finding her own words much too funny.

"Oh, you're right," she said between giggles, "it seems I've forgotten to write down every single dying person, as I was apparently too busy taking note that you'd worn mixed-up socks on a Wednesday."

He snapped his eyes back open at her, lowering his hand. "What? Which Wednesday?"

But he only watched as she tried in vain to hold back from laughing harder, her eyebrows coming up in pity, and he was looking back to the ceiling with a dead-pan expression before she collected herself enough to answer.

"Alright," she conceded cheerfully, "I made that one up, I'm sorry."

He sighed in response, stubbornly not accepting her apology or turning back to face her. As he stared at a particularly large crack in the ceiling that led all the way down to the window itself, probably letting in quite a draft, he took stock again of his bedding. Wiggling his feet, he was glad to find his boots still on at least, though his frown still deepened. He wanted to know how she had gotten the pillow under his head, but he couldn't find the voice to argue this point at the moment. He surely would have woken up for some of this, right? Or had he done the thing where he had been on sleepy autopilot, reacting but not conscious? If that was the case, had he said anything odd? Or—

"Say, can I ask you something?"

He glanced to the side warily, his nervous thoughts only growing louder, but he nodded.

She looked unsure of herself despite having already put the question out there, chewing on her lip before she got around to following it up. "It's... something that I couldn't find written down," she said carefully. "But I was just wondering... Why were we fighting in the first place?"

He winced. Of course that hadn't been written down—she had only had time afterward to write five words.

There wasn't really anything he could find worthy to defend his actions as he sifted through instead for some simple truth that he could say that was just plainly an answer and not a judgement.

"You... lied to me, about something important," he said at last. "At least, I thought you had."

Apparently he had stripped away too much contextual meaning, because she only squinted hard at his cryptic statement.

"Well... I bet you deserved it," she said rather childishly, and he understood she was just trying to make light of the situation rather than dive back too deeply into anything upsetting. "Arsehole."

The corners of his mouth twitched in a brief deadened grin. "Yeah. Probably."

Her eyes widened at the opposite effect that her ribbing had, and she seemed to jump back into questioning to cover it up.

"What was it? That I lied about, I mean."

"You didn't trust me," he replied more quickly than before, joining her in trying to not let the silence linger. "I think you thought that I was... dangerous, or something? I'm not sure."

"Called that one correctly, then," she teased with a smirk that faltered when he didn't share in with her easy-going expression. "Well... wait, didn't trust you how?"

His gaze drifted back towards the ceiling as he tried to piece together how much he should be explaining.

"Ah... To be in... There's an organization called The Order of the—"

"I know, I know; so I've read," she said, rolling her eyes and lifting her hands still crossed over her elbows to stop him from going on. "Sounds bloody stupid; definitely talking to Albus about that when I see him." From a glance, as he was remembering the way she had first looked embarrassed about being included in the name of the group, he watched her frown deepen in confusion. "But... hang on, that part _was_ written down. Why you're not in it, I mean."

The blankets suddenly felt uncomfortably warm as his heartbeat kicked up again. "What?"

She was peering back at him, maddeningly looking like she no longer thought this conversation was going down an avenue she wanted to persist with, but he turned back to fully look at her with an intense curiosity. She caved with a light sigh, looking away.

"Err... I'm not sure how much..." She shifted uncomfortably, and her face backed up from his, still not meeting his eye. "Um, so it says that... I asked Albus to lay off you for a bit—after that whole chaos with... Dark Lord The Second, I mean; when he went away. I guess you were meant to continue your spying thing, and you did for a bit, but it was a really awful time? Is that true? You just—lost the woman you loved, nearly died, got brought back—all in one night—and Albus asked you to, 'oh, get back out there, then; got a lot of work to do'?"

He stared in dumbstruck silence, only realizing to close his mouth when her face shifted questioningly.

"I—… I didn't _love her_ —she was _married_."

Her brows shot up to her hairline and then back down in extreme concern, but he was already forcefully shutting his eyes and turning away.

" _Oh_ ," she said with much emphasis, " _Yikes_... Must have... just... missed that bit—you know, that was _really_ not clear in the writing."

He busied his hands with covering his face by rubbing at his eyes as if still waking up, when really he wished at the moment that he hadn't woken up in the first place.

Trying to quickly push aside that he had honed in on the complete wrong part of this explanation, he picked up the pieces of what else she had said.

"So... you... didn't want me in because—"

"Because I thought you were soft, looks like," she finished before he could ask.

 _Brilliantly said, thanks._ He let out a long sigh through his nose, not opening his eyes yet.

Dredging up his memories of months earlier, he tried to get his drowsy brain to fit this into order. He had first thought it was Dumbledore himself keeping him away since he had then just become a teacher, which had indeed always been odd considering what he had asked him to do the first few days after the fall.

He had woken up feeling like he'd been resurrected, both tired all over and absurdly, horribly fine, in a bed that he had later found out was in the Hog's Head Inn. A phoenix on a dresser nearby had stirred, and then the man himself, Albus Dumbledore, had appeared. After their talk, in which he certainly made quite a scene letting out his full range of emotions, he had been given the task of helping out with the ensuing chaos from the other side. Find out what he could, actually look this time instead of running around trying to start fights and breaking down his carefully crafted guise in his turmoil, and make sure nothing else big was coming. It had been the most the man had ever asked from him, on such a tumultuous night, and Severus had only begrudgingly agreed in order to get the man to shut up and leave him alone. Which was when he had said the words to him:

" _If you should find, after I let you go from here, that this task is too much for you... If you will hate me, if you will resent me: that is fine. But listen to me, now, Severus... if you go, and if you hesitate to return, if you decide that your soul resides elsewhere... then do not come back."_

It took him three days to return, bringing with him the news that there was in fact nothing out there to find, and the Dark Lord had well and truly fallen, his followers scattered to every corner. But he hadn't come back in much better of a state, his head still fully wrapped up in grief, as it would remain for weeks afterward. When he was offered the thing that he had been chasing after for so long, the teaching position at Hogwarts, it was almost laughably underwhelming. But he had let himself be talked into it, and then he had left to become a wretch of a recluse in the month he had before the start of term.

He blinked up at the ceiling, where a small line of pale light was peeking out from the tops of the tall curtains.

Finally, softly, into the still quiet room, he said, "That... wasn't your decision to make for me..."

When she didn't answer, he turned his head to look, wondering if she disagreed. But there was a crease between her brow and she had him fixed with a hard defensive look.

"I don't remember making it," she said simply. Her expression softened when he didn't fight back, though.

She was right, after all. He couldn't hold her to something right now, and besides, it was meaningless. He himself had moments in the past of being grateful to only be focusing on such a simple job and not having to throw himself back out here, into this snake pit. Life at the castle had been stressful in its own right, that much was clear, but, undoubtedly, there had also been...

"I think... I understand, though."

Her voice had been so quiet as she said this, he almost felt like he was back asleep, being whispered to in his dreams. He wasn't at all sure what it was that she understood. But, as he stared at the tops of her lashes, hiding her eyes as she gazed down at the threadbare pattern of the couch and picked at a loose string, he thought that he just might trust enough that, whatever she was thinking, it was only with his best interest at heart.

Her eyes suddenly flicked up to his, and he stayed still where he was, half on his shoulder, one ear into the pillow. It felt like he was repeating his earlier half-asleep staring, but then, she was doing it as well, making it feel less rude—but not nearly as calm with his nerves fully awake as they now were. She slowly parted her lips to speak, and he tried with effort to keep his eyes up solely looking back into her own golden ones.

"Did you," she said in the same just as soft voice, "hear me? While you were asleep?"

He blinked and had to look away in thought, his brows crinkling just slightly, but he couldn't remember anything that he would have heard. He had just had the same dream that he so often did, though it had taken quite a turn at the start of the schoolyear when he had learned it had been her over him saving his life. In the very deep recesses of his dreams, he still shoved this fact to the wayside, and let himself comfortingly think that he had seen someone else.

He shook his head, the minuscule rustling sound his hair made against the pillow sounding loud down in the soft blanketed corner of the quiet room as he turned his eyes back to her.

"Oh," she said with just the smallest bit of a frown. It was all he saw before she let her head slowly fall forward, turning to rest her temple on her folded arms. He waited for a long moment to see if she would go on, but he finally decided, from the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, that she was done talking. And she seemed to have chosen her place to stay for sleep.

He checked back on the large bare bed, missing one pillow and it's thick top blanket, and down at where it was over top of him, folded in two.

"What— _Ah!_ "

It took her a couple of seconds to find where the end of the blanket was, but eventually a startled looking Freya poked her head out from where he had just unceremoniously tossed the fluffy quilted fabric fully over her.

"Your hair looks great like that," he commented, and then smirked while she was too busy running her hands over all the long flipped over strands to see him do it. She came back up with a scowl anyway.

"What's this for—we're sharing now?"

"Well, if you're going to take half my bed," he said, indicating with his eyes the several inches her arms had taken up at the edge of the couch. She looked down, measuring with her eyes to check herself, but she seemed unwilling to relinquish her post.

"Why don't you just go take the bed then if you don't like it?" she countered.

"Why don't you?" he delivered coolly back at once. Her glare soured more.

"I'm fine where I am, thanks," she said and without another word adjusted her half of the blankets around her shoulders and settled her head back into her arms to sleep.

He hadn't actually been expecting that, thinking for sure she would realize how embarrassing she was being and leave. But he wasn't willing to leave either. Apparently, they were both too stubborn to budge from their spots once they had taken root.

He stared at the top of her head for some time, taking in the way her hair was slowly cascading into place as it settled, piece by piece. He had the urge to reach out and touch it, to see if it was just as silky as he vaguely remembered, and his fingers rubbed together absently under the blanket, as if he could imagine it. The blanket felt less weighty with just the one half on him now, but he was still somehow quite warm.

After a moment's internal debate, wherein he almost decided to turn fully over to face his nose into the back of the couch for more privacy, he finally settled back onto his shoulder, moving so little as to not alert her. The way his head sank into the pillow blocked part of his view, but he could still just barely glimpse the tip of her nose, and the pool of her hair flowing over her shoulders.

He was hardly tired now, after being woken up half way through the night, but this was only part of the reason it took him so long to fall back into a deep dreamless sleep.

" _Wake up, wake up!_ "

Severus jerked straight up in bed so fast that his forehead collided painfully with something hard (" _Ow!_ "), and his brain spent the time he was rubbing his head to discern the enlightening fact that he was not in a bed, but a make-shift one, on a couch.

He blinked around in much confusion, his head hurting, and his eyes coming to rest on Freya, who was rubbing her own head in a similar way. Her eyes popped back up to his, frantic.

"Your thing! It's smoking!" He followed at a considerable lag to where her finger was pointing towards the door, where in fact a little brass instrument was swirling smoke in a deliberate fashion, though he couldn't make it out from across the room with his bleary eyes. Thankfully, Freya said helpfully in a hurried whisper, " _I think someone's at the door!_ "

He blinked one last time with incredible slowness—and then was nearly tripping fully over himself, wrapped up in the blanket that slipped under his foot as it landed, and having to grab onto Freya's shoulder as she scrambled out of his way.

" _Shit_ — _Who_ —"

But as he darted over to the door, in the decent light that he now realized was because the sun was up behind the curtains, the smoke figure answered his question: Bellatrix.

He whipped around again, reaching for his wand in his pocket, but before he could do anything, Freya's frantic hand motions distracted him. She was pointing all around her head and he squinted in confusion before she came over and practically dragged him by the collar down to where she could reach, fixing his hair for him while he squeezed his eyes shut.

"I— _Alright_! Just—go _sit_!"

And she sat. But the couch was still a mess of bedding, and he jabbed his wand, sending everything back to the bed in a haphazard flick. He was about to turn around when he caught sight of her baring her teeth in a grimace, but she switched to a very unconvincing smile and a thumbs up at the last second.

He took a deep breath—and then pulled the door open.

"Bellatrix," he said calmly with mild surprise. "What is it?"

Her shadowed eyes looked extremely unimpressed by his lateness to open the door, and after holding her glare on him for a beat, her gaze shifted behind him into the room. He couldn't help but look as well, out of nervousness for what was there. However, Freya was sat quite still on the couch, looking almost like a doll that had been politely posed, convincingly like a person under the Imperius Curse and perhaps with a bit less brains than before.

" _That_ ," Bellatrix pointed one thin finger, "is creepy. Even for you, Severus."

His head snapped back around to refute whatever she was thinking, but with much restraint, he conceded to ignore it rather than make a fool of himself even mentioning it. He took a deep breath and held it in.

"What do you want?" he asked more directly.

"We're about to have a meeting to discuss... some things," she said cryptically, eyeing him up and down. She didn't look entirely trusting of him, and he sluggishly remembered that he had put himself in more of an awkward situation yesterday than just dragging a strange woman off to his quarters. He had some very thorough explaining to do, and it had better be airtight. "If you're not too... busy," her eyes went back to the room beyond him, "would you care to join us? It's been so long."

"I will be out in a minute then," he said, picturing the dining room and what other meetings had taken place there.

She gave him one last scrutinizing look, and then she was gone. He was careful not to slam the door after her despite his urge to.

He nearly jumped back when he turned around, as Freya was standing right behind him, suddenly no longer a doll.

"A meeting?" she asked with concern. "What does that mean?"

"It means..." He raised a hand to rub at his groggy face, closing his eyes to think, but he trailed off entirely as his train of thought split into several directions at once, all too quickly.

It couldn't mean anything good, that much was certain.

His eyes snapped open and he lowered his hand, zeroing in on Freya's anxiously waiting face.

"Can I... ask you to do something?"

Her eyes widened. "Does it involved going out there...?"

Slightly apologetic, he nodded, but she relaxed before he could even explain.

"Oh, _thank_ goodness," she said with an inexplicable smile that only made him frown, "I thought you were going to leave me in here; I was about to put up such a fuss, you've no idea."

"Glad that could be avoided," he said with unconvinced apprehension. It was important, though, that he show rather than tell that she really was under his Imperius Curse—at least by way of her acting, which he had faith that she could pull off. "But I do have to warn you... this isn't exactly... safe. I can't guarantee that someone won't raise their wand to you again—"

"And you'll swoop in like prince and save me again, will you?"

He watched her sarcastic grinning face, quirking her eyebrow at him as if he was either stupid for treating her like precious cargo, or a supreme hypocrite given why she was here in the first place.

But at that moment, as his mind was still waking up after getting to sleep comfortably and safely with her watching over him, after everything he did, he didn't feel the least bit shy to say what deserved to be said—and mean it with every part of him.

Her smile fell as he reached out for her shoulder, but he held her in place, gripping the other as well as she looked up at him in flustered surprise, trapped under his sudden intense gaze. He let the deepness of his voice, lowered even further having just woken up, carry every bit of the sincerity of what he had to say.

"Yes, I will. I'll keep you safe. I promise."

As it turned out, thankfully there was no need for him to do any heroic dash maneuvers in front of any deadly spells during the meeting. The most life-threatening thing that happened was him being cackled at by a small collective of Death Eaters for having a thing for redheads, making him feel rather superhuman after he managed to hold back from obliterating everything in sight including himself. Aside from the faces of former friends (who looked a lot less friendly towards him now) giving him a hard time for his choice in Hogwarts staff to assign as his puppet guard, and making his faux-puppet seem to go dead in the eyes behind her placid smile and shoot him the sharpest look he had seen since Professor Powers tried to flirt with her, it turned out that he had been correct in assuming the worst if Bellatrix was calling together everyone she could find to talk.

"We _have_ to go tell Albus," Freya said once they were safely back in the confines of his secrecy-spelled room. Even she didn't sound very convinced though, and her gaze, like his, wandered out towards the rest of the room, standing around as he was, in deep contemplation. He didn't even bother answering her as he was still trying to sort things out from every angle—and hers was the worst yet, which he had already discarded.

"We... can't just leave," he said slowly, thinking out loud, "not after just hearing this. It would be far too obvious. And besides, by her telling of it, this won't happen until a future date."

"So then...?"

"We wait," he said simply, striding over to the couch so he could sit and think. When he caught sight of Freya's face, she looked as if he had just suggested going back out to fight the room of Death Eaters with spoons.

"I'm not _waiting_!" she said incredulously. "Those people sound mental!"

 _Oh, they definitely are_. "Welcome to the life of a double agent," he said unhappily. "You can't just go running around attacking large groups of insane people at will."

"But you do agree; we have to go to Albus, right?"

He did agree that this was something that normally he would have relayed to him to have dealt with by the Order, yes, but he was still tightlipped on the thought of Dumbledore. Freya seemed to see where his hang-up was, and went on.

"Oh, this is _stupid_ ," she said raising her hands and turning on her heel to pace across the wood floor. "He's not going to strike you dead on the spot—"

"He might."

"No he bloody won't! You'll just be bringing me back, right where I'm supposed to go—and where I'm supposed to be bringing you—and you'll have information that you can trade in—"

"Information that I only got by chance, as I wasn't meant to be here," he said with a numb rationale. "I would hazard a guess that he values your life over mere information."

" _And I am right bloody here! Perfectly alive!_ "

His eyes that had gone out of focus blinked and looked up. She waited until he met her gaze to gesture wildly to her very real physical form that did indeed seem to be alive. Her robes still bore the stitching though, and her mind still did not remember him.

He didn't have it in him at the moment to argue the point, and he needed to do some careful thinking about other things besides, so he left her off with a rather dismissive note:

"We'll wait until nightfall. Then we can discuss what to do."

He watched her puff up and deflate multiple times as she tried to find a way to argue around this, but, eventually, she had to concede. Though she did look plenty cross about it, and stomped her way over to the bed rather than the space he had left on the other side of the couch. The dressings he had haphazardly spelled through the air earlier were severely off-kilter, and she straightened out the blanket before she sat down with a huff.

He couldn't exactly blame her. As long as he was trapped here, she was as well, and the only person she seemed to remember from a time before she had first died was far away, beyond her reach. Apparently Dumbledore also held some of her memories, if his reading of the first page of her diary was correct. He wasn't entirely sure what that would entail, or what would happen if she did get her memories returned, but he was sure he didn't want to be around when it happened.

It was true, though, that he couldn't stay here. There was plenty of reason for him to leave, including the precise excuse of dropping her supposedly confused memory-addled-self back off at Hogwarts for later use as a Death Eater pawn. He had to be careful not to put himself in the position to be the pawn, however. He had already turned down being a part of Bellatrix's plan, stating that his availability was limited and would draw too much attention. His lies were starting to compound into themselves, and he needed to make a decision quickly to fix them up neatly back into place.

He needed to go back.

As the afternoon wore on into evening, Freya lounged on the bed, reading her own diary with the look of someone who was just starting to learn a new language, while he busied himself going in and out of the room, making the small set-ups that would lead to his bigger decision to leave less noticeable. When he came back into the bedroom for a final time, Freya was standing in the middle of the room, not reading, but waiting.

"Well, it looks like the sun is going down," she commented pointedly, making him realize for the first time just how dark it had gotten without his noticing. His current sleep schedule had him so mixed up, and he had slept so long last night, that with the deep wintery hours there really hadn't been much sun left for him to catch. "So," she continued as he turned back from looking at the velvet curtains to find a very normal Freya-looking smile on her face, assumedly because she had seen him pack his trunk up on his last pass, "perhaps it's time for that chat, eh?"

But he had just realized something on the thread of their location effecting the time of sunset, so distant they were from Hogwarts, and he put off what he needed to say a little longer with a simpler question.

"How did you find me here?"

He watched her face go from surprised to knowing, and then, making him almost wary, she stepped right up to him within arm's reach—and began practically trying to pickpocket him.

"What—are you—I haven't got anything," he said, slapping her hands away from his robes and finally getting her to knock it off by backing up. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Yes, you do." And she inexplicably held out her hand, palm up.

He blinked as she wiggled her fingers, and even humored her by shoving his hands in his pockets, but there was nothing. Even she frowned now.

"Wait—where is it?"

"I told you, I—"

But a thought suddenly occurred to him. He _did_ have something of hers.

He reached back into his pocket and pulled out his wand, holding it out flat in his hand. Her eyes widened and her brows shot up her forehead.

" _No_ —you're _joking_ ," she breathed, darting her hand out—but he had already played this game before and swiftly held his wand out of her reach. "Let me see that!"

"You found me," he said, and he could hardly believe it, "by _this_?" That had to mean... she had been able to find him the whole school year because of—

"You can't have that! I can't have—there's no way I would have given anyone—"

"You didn't give it to me," he corrected her before she could start accusing him of stealing it, "you gave it to the wandmaker, Ollivander. All I did was pick it up from his shop." This didn't seem to give her any kind of consolation, still looking thoroughly appalled. But he went on, and, hesitantly, with an almost teasing voice, quoted what the wandmaker himself often said: "But... the wand does choose the wizard, after all."

He could have almost laughed at the way her expression snapped so quickly into a perfect little unamused frown, her neat brows making a tiny 'v'. She glared up at him with such a pout that he finally, slowly, lowered his wand from the air to hold out to her, hoping she wasn't hateful enough towards wizards to be snapping wands and ripping their cores out. This thought made him flinch as she reached for it, but her hand slowed, and they seemed to come to an unspoken agreement. He watched as she carefully passed her hand over the wand without taking it, touching the smooth wood and lightly brushing his palm with her fingertips in a way that made his job of holding his hand still very difficult.

And then she shot a disgusted look up at him that made him level a blank look of innocence back down. She was doing a good job at reacting exactly as she first had so far by his tally. Hopefully this version of her wouldn't really burn down a wand shop, though.

With a seething sigh, her eyes still on his wand even as he pocketed it, she stepped back. Her eyes went up and down him as they had once before, only this time he felt pleasantly neutral, knowing she had already approved him to carry his wand with its phoenix tailfeather core.

"That," she pointed at his pocket, "is the worst thing I've seen since resurrecting. And that's saying something, as the first thing I did was run into a thorn bush while some spidery woman chased me down."

He raised his brows. "Did you?"

She opened her mouth, looking regretful at having admitted to this. "Err... No," she said, straightening her posture, "I was just exaggerating."

He gave a slow nod of his chin, not taking his eyes off her. She looked about to start in defensively, but he cut her off, as a curious thought had just occurred to him.

"It's Blackthorn wood, you know," he said, looking into her eyes. He watched the way her expression cleared to a pleasant surprise, and knew what she was about to say before she said it.

"Oh, like the wine?"

The corners of his mouth threatened to turn up, but it was too painful still.

"Yes," he said, "like the wine... I've also done some research into it. Apparently, it's a hard wand wood to win the loyalty of. Almost like... a phoenix."

Her eyes narrowed with slow deliberation as her mouth flattened out to a thin line, and he did let loose a grin then.

"Well, I don't remember you winning me over to earn that," she said back coolly.

His smile fell to a sad shadow of his usually playful mischievous expression that he would hold during their banter.

No, she didn't remember. But he wished she did. And he would do everything in his power to earn back getting to be a part of her memories once more.

"I think I prefer the wine myself," she said over his thoughts, absently wrapping a long lock of hair around her finger as her eyes gazed out behind him towards the windows. "' _It bares the sweetest berries after the hardest frosts_ '... I don't know about wands, but I do like that feeling of something hard-won, don't you?"

He watched the way the light caught her eyes in just the right way, and felt his smile return just a bit, nodding as he looked away.

"That's good," she said much more bluntly, "because after reading a bit more of that diary, I'm only feeling half-way positive about Albus not killing you when we show up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, just wanted to quickly note that the quote about Blackthorn was taken from the source nearly word-for-word at the Wizarding World website on wand woods (say that ten times fast). I know people have asked why I chose Blackthorn for Severus's wand, and this is why! I was planning out a very bittersweet, hard-won type of story, and liked the Blackthorn quote better for it. Here is the full relevant part:
> 
> _"It is a curious feature of the blackthorn bush, which sports wicked thorns, that it produces its sweetest berries after the hardest frosts, and the wands made from this wood appear to need to pass through danger or hardship with their owners to become truly bonded. Given this condition, the blackthorn wand will become as loyal and faithful a servant as one could wish."_
> 
> Also, as long as I'm here, I should thank you very much for reading this far! And inform you that this is about halfway into the story I've planned out, although I haven't pinned down just how many chapters it will amount to, mostly because I keep underestimating just how much I write and having to split things up. I hope it isn't too arduous of a read. I'm sorry. :')
> 
> Anyways, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy the next chapter (it's a fair bit lighter than this one!), and have a great day!


	9. By the Fire

_—***—_

* * *

The destination was downward, but not at any usual place. Each wide stone step descended sent a reverberation into the air that seemed to echo through the cavernous corridor despite the soles of his boots being spelled silent. Not a single creature stirred, the fat marble columns resolute, and the portraits here devoid of any kind of life that would have moved within their frames. Still, he crept as quietly as possible through the empty hall.

With the creak of an ancient door on disused hinges, as what lay behind it had little need, he entered into a room full of the dust and smoke that could only be expected of this sort of location. The shadowy underground, with fire blazing and hot red brick, seemed to speak in the form of a many-limbed thing, all moving at once and creating a smooth, impactful cacophony that spoke of warnings and of temptations.

He mustn't be distracted, however, as he was on a very strict, very critical, mission; one that must not be strayed from when what was riding on this could mean a most certain unpleasant death...

Moments later, with his prize gripped tight in his hands, Severus exited the Hogwarts kitchens carrying a basket so large and heavy, the house elves that had handed it off to him had needed to team up in a pair of two, torn between wanting to heed his request and having to prepare for the Christmas Eve feast later that day. Now, looking much more cross rather than careful as he quickly returned to his office, he was tasked with having to remove the exorbitant number of bows and ribbons, tinsel and star ornaments, that had been stuck onto the wrapping paper to the effect that he wasn't even sure what pattern was on it. An hour later, he was on the move again, and back to prowling like a cat through a dog-infested junkyard.

The castle itself appeared perfectly empty, but this only put him more on edge, as anyone he was likely to run into now would be a horrifying option. The precise man in question that he was most fearing a chance encounter with, however, would most likely not be leaving his tower anytime soon.

It had been a tense sort of reunion just over a full day ago in that tower. The only solace was that, for once, he had not been standing alone in Dumbledore's office— _standing_ alone, specifically, of course, because there had been a phoenix on its perch plenty of other times he had been there long ago. This time, she had stood right beside him. It also helped that some of the initial tension had been broken before they arrived at the office, when Dumbledore had met them at the gates and Freya had rushed forward with—in the middle of how happy she was to see him—endlessly enraptured comments about how absolutely old he looked.

"That's it then. Nothing to really be done but wait for it to happen."

It was night, and the office was only half-lit as if its owner had not been expecting guests, but even by candlelight Severus could see the little crease between Freya's brows as she rounded off her recanting, looking just as nonplussed about this plan of inaction as she had been at the woodland mansion. He had let her do most of the talking, and was trying to convince himself he wasn't hiding behind her if he was standing exactly level with her before the desk, but he still definitely felt as if he was achieving a mitigated effect of the hard stare being directed their way.

"I definitely want to be there when it does, though," Freya added with renewed gusto. "I'd love to see one of them come at me when I get my magic back."

Dumbledore didn't return her enthusiasm, and, in fact, didn't seem to be smiling at her as he had been when first he greeted her (just her, as he had been ignoring Severus entirely).

"I think," Dumbledore said slowly, "that we shall have to wait and see if we will be sending more than one of you at that time."

She blinked, and then turned to raise her brows at Severus, though he refrained from reacting except to meet her eyes with a sideways glance, trying not to draw attention to himself.

"He can't come? Oh, don't be hard on him, he's the one who picked up on all this in the first place. You know, I really think you've been getting kind of—"

"I was not referring," Dumbledore spoke up with added volume to cut off her ensuing rant, then lowered his voice as if to soften his blow, "to him."

Now it was both people standing that looked surprised, though he was still keeping his eyes lowered.

"What—me?"

Dumbledore seemed to be about to draw in a deep breath but controlled himself against it.

"Yes, Freya. I believe it would be wise to keep you out of the field... until... you have had some time to sort through your memories."

The relieving aura emanating from his left side companion abruptly ceased, and after chancing another quick glance her way, he became increasingly worried for the outcome of this reunion.

"What do those memories have to do with anything?" she said in a voice that was no longer warm and friendly.

There was an uncomfortable pause where Severus couldn't tell what was happening with his eyes now so glued to the fascinating rug below, and he was filled with the strong desire to lean back on the heels of his boots and ghost himself from the room, because this did not feel a conversation that he needed to be a hapless witness to.

"You... You named an organization after me—and you want to keep— _me_ —out of it?" she asked in low disbelief that quickly jumped to a higher volume than he had ever heard directed at Albus Dumbledore unless in some kind of altercation. "Are you _joking_? I wasn't wrong, was I? You really have changed—and you just want me to remember so I can be soft like you are now! Well, you can forget that."

Severus did have to look up in reaction then, because his side was suddenly empty, and as he stared, unable to stop the scene from unfolding, Freya was already undoing a latch on one of the nearest large windows and stepping onto the sill.

"Your nose didn't age well!" she shouted over her shoulder, and with that, hopped out into the freezing night air and was gone in a pop of fire and feathers.

So... that was step two failed, then, as taking back her memories without being difficult hadn't gone quite so neatly as she had written it in her diary.

His gaze came to rest somewhere between the open window and the man who still had not looked at him a single time since his return to the castle, not sure which direction was colder, and he seriously contemplated jumping out after her. His only viable escape route snapped shut, however, and his eyes finally flicked as close as he dared near Dumbledore, onto his wand that he had just commanded the window closed with.

In the once more still air, with only the tinkling sound of his numerous silvery instruments, the headmaster finally took in a hugely deep breath—and sighed.

Severus felt like he was seeing a rare sight; that of a Dumbledore who became annoyed with his troubles rather than grinning them away with a sage-like serenity. If he had to bet, he'd have said he was about to see another rare happening, as he doubted anyone had been murdered in this office in quite some time.

Impenetrable blue eyes fixed him with a grim stare, trapping his gaze in place and making him dearly wish that Freya was right about how soft her old friend had gotten.

"It would appear," Dumbledore spoke, and his usual joking manner was a shade darker, but still held some of the ironic air, "that I have a job opening in the place of one who can travel at will into dark places while keeping a cool head."

Severus held his breath.

"And to think," Dumbledore went on, his voice growing colder still, "that all you had to do was kill the previous occupant to get it. A feat that I am sure crossed your mind plenty of times before for another position."

His mouth popped open to reply without thinking, but he quickly shut it again, his lips retreating between his teeth. The icy stare seemed to take pity and free him, moving to instead gaze out the window that his phoenix had just flown from. The age in his lined face stood out as his expression changed to perhaps match the distance that she already traveled, far away and with nothing but cold in between.

"Let us hope that will be the only position I need to replace," Dumbledore said quietly, as if merely speaking to his empty office. If Severus didn't know any better, and if he dared speak or move, he might inquire as to if he should just leave him be, but the headmaster spoke up again before he could, still directing his thoughts aloud to the window.

"Do you know that the teaching position of Defense Against the Dark Arts is cursed?" Without waiting for a reply, and without Severus having a moment to react regardless, except to internally feel victorious in a long-assumed debate, he went on, "I did give her fair warning, of course. But she merely said... 'I don't think I've had the pleasure of dying by curse before. It sounds quite interesting. Hopefully it comes up with a new way to kill me each year, so you can have a good story for me each time I wake up. But if I go out because a student tripped me down the stairs, just make up something more fantastic please.'"

The softened smile on his face that had shown up as he spoke, demonstrating a fondness that transcended a lifetime, slowly faded out, and once more the blue eyes were back on him with a stare like sudden death.

"Did you tell her, Severus? The full tale of exactly how you killed her?"

Once more, his mouth fell open to speak, but he could not. Even if he had managed to so much as squeak, Dumbledore was shocking him mute once more by standing from his chair, as he never had before, and coming to stand right before him.

"Yes, I did," he finally managed, as if compelled beyond his will.

"And did you," Dumbledore continued, his voice picking up in strength so that at such close proximity it seemed a powerful spell in and of itself, "look her in the eye when you told her, or were you staring at the floor as you are now?"

His eyes jerked up, though he regretted it very much. It was a testament to how foolish the Death Eaters were that they would sneer this man's name where he could not—or more accurately did not care enough to—reach them. None would dare have ever uttered the name 'Albus Dumbledore' without hesitation to their voice in his presence, no more than the title of their own Lord himself. For as much as they wished to repel the truth, the pair were quite on another level from any ordinary wizard.

But then, he liked to think that he was especially competent in at least a few ways as well, and even as the memory of that night and the spell he had cast was summoned to the forefront of his mind, he thought hard only of another picture: that of a smiling face filled with a laughter that was like music. The sharp sting to his chest seemed to pin him upright into place like a moth to a board, and he held his gaze steady, though perhaps with the same deadened haze of one such unlucky insect.

"I told her... directly. Every detail."

Dumbledore inclined his chin, staring down his crooked nose and through his spectacles at him.

"Well then... finally... would I be wrong to assume that you must have forgotten our agreement on what was to be expected if you took your leave from here?"

This he could at least answer without hesitation— " _No_ " —but it seemed it had been useless to reply.

"Good. But I dare say that you can now erase it from your mind, Severus. Because, I must inform you, that you will no longer be allowed the mercy to easily skulk away from here. No, next time, I'm afraid, you will not be making it quite so far as the gates."

His mouth did not dare open itself even of its own volition this time, as his eyes once more found the rug.

It wasn't until the headmaster had retaken his seat behind his desk that Severus finally allowed himself to repeat the words in his head. _Next time_... but not this time.

"It would appear," Dumbledore said, as if answering his thoughts as he busied himself with smoothing out his long robes and beard, "that you have found a loophole in my words. Being that it was never stated what the rules were should you be brought back against your better judgement... by someone who very much wants you to be here."

Worlds apart from the threat that had just been made, Severus almost thought that the gaze now cast on him seemed from a completely different person; one who might even have a twinkle in his eyes, though it was hard to tell through the still stormy steel blue if this was from the candlelight or not. He couldn't handle the whiplash of this, nor did he yet intend to stick a toe out of line. Presently though—at the very least, outwardly—the hostility had been laid to rest. He now wondered if perhaps all of the warnings to not rely on Freya had been more to do with not wanting the two of them to get close; because it seemed that if Freya wanted him here, then Dumbledore wouldn't be able to argue as strongly against it.

"Do you realize the debt that you owe her for leading you through the dark even at the high cost of her own light?"

It took him a moment to answer, but this time it was because he was so distracted imagining how her face would have soured if she had heard this, as if she were a magical creature rather than a person, and wondered if she hated it so much because this man was so prone to throwing out flowery allegory.

At last, he nodded.

"Good then." Dumbledore suddenly brightened, folding his hands over his desk and leaning in. "I believe it's only two days now before Christmas? A time of celebrations both cultural and personal, and a time to show those we care about some much-needed cheer... and appreciation." His voice suddenly dropped seemingly without cause to a low murmur, making Severus have to strain to hear him. "Now, I would tell you exactly what sort of gift would befit Freya, but, as she's currently listening at the window, I don't particularly want to spoil the surprise for her."

Severus whipped his head around to the window just as it rattled and he could see a large red bird take off from a little alcove under the eave. He began to wonder if he had ever had a private conversation here, or if those didn't exist with Freya lurking about. He turned back to find Dumbledore looking once more like he was being forced to entertain a talking toad in his office, and thought he might be able to pinpoint the exact moment she had been sitting within his eyesight just by the looks on his face. It didn't appear that he had been saying all of that just for her sake, though, as he carried on.

"Forgive me if I'm mistaken... but you are familiar with the finer points of muggle life, are you not?"

He couldn't stop himself from allowing just a bit of a frown at this. His privacy was apparently once again on the table, and a question that he hadn't been willing to ask Freya while he had the chance alone with her still burned in his mind. His slight irritation was apparently confirmation enough for Dumbledore to continue to his point.

"As much as I am sure that Freya would love a bouquet or a box of Christmas cookies, I think it would perhaps be more appropriate of an apology to commit to a meaningful action. You see, it's been a bit of a tradition for a while now that when she awakens, she likes to watch a muggle film. I'm not sure if you're familiar—"

"I know about it," he said at once, surprising himself as well as Dumbledore, though he thought it might be more from the sound of his own voice filling the office after being quiet for so long. "She... She told me. Not the tradition, but... I'm aware of her interest in films. And that she has the means in her office, but she hasn't been able to configure things properly."

He could almost count the wrinkles that lined Dumbledore's forehead as his brows rose, and he suddenly wasn't sure if divulging how thorough his knowledge was hadn't been a misstep. The words had just spilled out as if he were reciting information from a mission with crucial attention to detail.

"Did she?" he said at last, and Severus couldn't tell if it was a note of shock or of irritation that his voice held. The old face slowly slackened until he seemed to be deflating as he breathed out, and then the blue eyes that had stabbed like spears at him lowered to his desk, looking world-weary. If he hadn't known any better, he would have said Dumbledore looked defeated in that moment. It reminded him of something Freya had said the night she had stood challenging him at the castle gates days ago; that she talked to Dumbledore about many things, including him, because he was her close friend—but it seemed she hadn't talked to him about this.

"I see," Dumbledore said at last. And then he did something that Severus had not ever seen him do while the two of them were alone—not just in reference to Freya, not to her sitting in the window (though he did check with a quick uncomfortable glance, almost to look away from what he was seeing)—but just at him. Dumbledore cast the faintest bit of a smile his way, though thin in its execution, and looking like he had perhaps just bitterly lost a game of chess.

"Perhaps, then... this old man should rather be keeping his crooked nose out of other people's business."

Severus had the deliberate urge to deflect that there was any business to be keeping out of, remembering as well that it had never been discussed whether or not McGonagall had told him about finding them both drunk together. He suddenly missed the piercing stare and the reliable rug. It was even harder to look him in the eye like this. It was, however, an opening for him to jump into another topic entirely, which he hoped would now be allowed, because he very much wanted to get away from this one.

"Headmaster, sir, if you don't mind my asking," he spoke and then paused to see if this was indeed minded. Dumbledore merely inclined his head that he could continue. "How... exactly... is it that you know about my... personal affairs?" He wasn't sure if he should be saying 'upbringing' or 'home life,' but both seemed to imply too much too close to what he regarded as top secret. He watched Dumbledore's head incline another inch in understanding.

"Ah... Severus, I would have thought that had been... painfully obvious." Indeed, it did seem he was pained to answer this. It took him a moment to continue his reply, and at first, he only cast a thoughtful glance his way. Eventually though, he turned to him directly and, with eyes that contained not a trace of animosity, only a barely hidden sadness, said, "It was, of course, Lily."

The hefty basket in his arms was proving just how overstuffed with goodies it was by the time he reached the second floor, making him wish he had thought to charm it lighter sooner than before his boots were already coming to a slow stop outside the office door.

Despite having to adjust his handling on his awkward bundle, he made no motion to knock just yet. He stood out in the deserted hallway, staring at the wood paneled door as if transfixed—but his mind was still moving plenty; far away, and in and out of times long passed.

The last time he had come to stand in this hall with something in his arms, it had been a phoenix on a night with perhaps a bit too much to drink. And afterword, he had felt that distinct stand-out twinge of betrayal, threaded up through all his other guilt and remorse, like catching his boot under a thorny vine grown from a seed he had forgotten had been planted, but had become so deeply tangled, it went beyond something that he could place a name to at the time.

Until a day ago, when he had felt it again.

So caught up in his paranoia and his turmoil over where this new woman stood in his new life, he had forgotten what had indeed been so obvious.

And he had forgotten especially on that night of drinking. He had allowed himself to let go, and even more so, to reach out.

He stood so still in the hall that he felt cast in stone, the weight straining on his arms pulling them into a stronger steel. By the time he finally moved, it was only as a ghost reaching out from its suit of armor to knock, while the inner statue stayed resolutely at its vigil.

For now, he did still have other debts that needed to be addressed.

However, when Freya opened the door almost at once, it wasn't her who wound up looking most surprised. In fact, she didn't look like his presence surprised her at all. Her whole face was already lit up in a wide smile, her eyes immediately on his despite that he was holding the most gaudy looking gift, and her exuberant voice rang out through the hall.

"Severus!"

He blinked in shock as a hole was punched straight through to his unwillingly still fleshy heart.

"You... remember me?"

But he saw at once his mistake, as her face fell to a puzzled confusion—and then to a comical display of sudden remembrance.

"Ohh, right," she said, snapping her fingers and pointing at him. "You're the bloke who killed me, yeah?"

He felt as if his chest had been minced to a nice Christmas pudding as he attempted to stretch his mouth out in an answering humorous tone.

"That... would be me."

She laughed, further rendering him dumb in the doorway, standing with his stupid basket.

"Yes, yes, it's very sad. Come in, though, come in!"

She stepped back and ushered him over the threshold, leading him in and finally calling attention to the present wrapped in so much holiday cheer it was practically shining in the low light of her office.

"That's surely not for me, is it? All of that?"

_Well it isn't for the Acromantula_ , he thought to himself, staying at a wary pace behind her as he was unsure if he should be trusting someone with memory loss to have been caring for a room full of Dark or magically enhanced creatures. Putting his apprehension aside though as they came to a stop, he organized his face into one of polite formality more befitting of his words, and held the basket up an extra inch.

"Happy Christmas."

She looked much more perplexed that he would have gotten her a gift than shown up at her office, and he had another reminder that despite her overly friendly nature, he was still more like a stranger to her. Her apprehensive smile parted to speak, but she appeared at a loss for words for a second longer.

"Err... Not for another twelve hours at least, by my count," she said at last, turning away. "But I suppose you can just set it down... Oh."

His eyes fell to where she had been indicating, noticing the problem as well. It looked like the terrariums had been the least of her worries, as it was her desk space that was in complete disarray at the moment. They both stared down at the paper- book- and scroll-strewn mess, with even all available chairs piled up high—and then she peeked back at him with a blameless look, as if this was the work of someone else and she was as shocked to find it this way as he was—despite the fact that she had been shut in here alone. He had half a mind to wonder if she hadn't been so pleased to greet him because he had freed her from dealing with this very thing.

"Right... Hm... Maybe you should just come in here instead."

She turned around, and he was reminded that he had heard an interior door open here before, but hadn't seen it hidden behind a large shelf of ferns behind which she now disappeared. He followed after her with almost more apprehension than through the first door, not sure at all what to be expecting, as he was sure this could only be her personal chambers. This thought was strengthened as the moment the door was opened, a waft of what he now realized must be the scent of candles, so familiarly like her, both spiced and sweet, drifted out to him.

After a few short feet of shadowed passageway, however, they came into an openly inviting circular room, and he saw immediately that most of it was dedicated to a cozy sitting area. As his eyes passed from one enormously tall window on the right, up to the domed ceiling, and down to a mirrored tall window on the left next to a stone fireplace with candles on the mantel, he realized with quiet amusement that the room was shaped like a birdcage. If there hadn't been a giant potted tree in the center, matching some of the amount of enlivening greenery in the office, he might have thought she was really a self-loathing creature. Connecting this centerpiece to the curved wall was an ornate wooden room divider, and beyond the thin tree trunk and its branches (which had been decorated for Christmas with free-floating sparkling lights and glittering ornaments), he could just see the corner of a bed, and realized that this was indeed her sleeping quarters, it had just been modestly split for both privacy and company. He looked away at once, back to the more well-lit sitting area beside the fire.

"Just set it down here, don't mind the mess," Freya was saying as she strode over to the small couch facing a coffee table and a comfortable armchair. She folded her legs neatly under her and plopped down right on the floor between couch and table, clearing away, to his further surprise, even more books and papers. He finally unburdened his load carefully onto the middle of the clearing that she made, the basket giving a noticeable little thud as it landed on the wood. He took the seat facing her, in the armchair.

Only, her face was currently hidden, so large a gift that it was. She leaned hard to one side, apparently also noticing the predicament, and casting him a thoroughly bemused look.

"Is this some kind of 'sorry for killing you' present?" she asked with a single raised brow.

"If you want to think of it like that," he replied with a casual shrug, settling back into his seat. _Definitely not because your 'old friend' put the fear of ancient magic beyond parallel into me_. Despite her morbid question though, and despite whatever his initial reasoning for being here was, he couldn't help but feel a little bit pleased with himself at the hesitantly charmed look on her face, knowing that he could make her smile when he actually tried and it wasn't just a random event. Even though he was meant to be treating her, he allowed himself the tiny acknowledgement that it had been quite a rough December for himself as well, and he was greedily enjoying this change of pace where he could just do something right for once.

He nodded once towards the basket. "Enjoy."

She paused for a moment longer, looking between him and it, and then disappeared back behind the bulk of the package to tear off the wrappings in a noisy frenzy. He took the second his face was hidden from her view to bite back his smirk, remembering how she had once admonished him for shrewdly just vanishing the wrappings of a gift that she had given him. He liked his way better, but this had its merits when turned around.

After the paper had all been torn off, however, there was a quiet pause—and then the basket was slowly pushed aside, to reveal a very unamused scowl staring straight at him.

"Is this a joke?" she asked, in a voice that made all his confidence seep out into the soft corduroy cushions of the chair and run scurrying back into the office behind. "You got me a basket of fruit?"

He stared from her to the basket, blinking and shifting ever so slightly in his seat.

"I... wasn't sure what else you liked... It's what Slughorn got you once."

Her suspicious expression twitched in recognition, and he watched as her hands darted up to scramble through the books on the coffee table. He realized a pile of them were the same small black leather as her diary, and his eyes stopped here, transfixed. There were only five that he could count that all matched, in various states of wear, and it was one in the middle of the pile that she now pulled out and cracked open, flipping until she found a list on a long, folded note that came out freely.

"'Horace Slughorn,'" she read, as if unfamiliar with saying the name out loud, "'great conversationalist; gives good candied apples; don't let him hover behind—tried to cut my hair off once when I wasn't looking...'" Her eyes flashed up to him. "'...after asking me how much phoenix feathers fetch on the market.'"

He pursed and then slowly un-pursed his lips. "You always... seemed to like him well enough."

She let a low sigh and then replaced the list and the book, turning her attention back to the basket with distaste.

"Do you know what sort give phoenixes fruit? The kind trying to get something from them." She poked at what was the nearest apple, though it would have been hard to tell what it was if one had only seen it in its current state. "A shame, because it's quite... beautiful."

His eyes glanced over the arrangement. She bloody well think it beautiful at least, the time it had taken him.

Overtop of the deep cradle of the basket, which did indeed carry whole plump fruits in a wide variety, was a much more eye-catching display taking up the entire space beneath the tall handle: delicately carved, intricately put together—with what looked like skill bordering on artisanal as far as he was concerned—fruit in the shape of many different flowers. Apple roses, strawberry carnations, peach peonies; with bright green pears shaped and arranged to be their leaves, and many other random things he had found to do with the others.

See her try and say he couldn't cut a muffin straight in half again. He had been finely slicing up potions' ingredients more than half his life, he just only gave that sort of care to things worthy of his attention.

Such as this had been.

Apparently, however, he had forgotten a very important fact that he should have been well aware of as the passage from the book had been on his mind so often lately. It was poachers and ill sorts that tempted phoenixes with fruit. But he wasn't trying to get anything out of her, not anything like that anyway. What he wanted was far less worthy of being won with a few apples. Besides even his desire to earn her forgiveness, a part of him had wanted his reference to strike a chord in her that would make all her memories come flooding back, so that she wouldn't be just the Freya that had read about his shoddy muffin cutting in her diary, but one that would probably laugh at him for trying so hard to prove himself. But if she wasn't going to remember, he had no intention of owning up to this being his own work.

A moment passed on in silence as they both seemed to be separately brooding, but it was Freya taking in another deep breath to sigh through her nose—and then leaning into the basket with interest as she couldn't seem to help herself from the sweet aroma, eyes darting to him guiltily—that broke it. He slowly raised a single brow at her, to which she just slightly puffed up her cheeks.

"Well..." She refused to look at him, but instead was eyeing a particularly striking strawberry rose that seemed to be drawing in her hand against her will. "Well, it would... be an even bigger shame to let it go to waste... It won't last very a long, will it...?"

"It's not poisoned, I promise you," he said with dull sarcasm as if to encourage her, but only achieving a considerably more apprehensive look in response.

"That... really isn't comforting to hear before eating, is it?" she said, trying to suppress a laugh.

He frowned. "Well, it isn't. It's just from the kitchens."

She plucked the little strawberry from its place, already reaching with her other hand for another as she scooted closer to the basket. "And if it is, you can just make an antidote or something, right?" She raised her brows at him as she popped the whole strawberry into her mouth in one bite.

"Have a card with quick facts about me, as well, do you?"

She nodded silently with her mouth full and then frowned down at the basket, reaching in further and pulling out something containing a mini bouquet within it. The goblet she held up to display questioningly to him had on it a diamond pattern surrounding a crest of none other than Slytherin. The corners of his mouth crept up.

"Your favorite House."

He watched with gradually returning amusement as she enthusiastically took edible petals off the goblet's pear flowers and placed them into her mouth one by one, feeling much more sure that he had chosen the correct gift. The goblet itself still seemed to be puzzling her, though, as she paused to inspect the little green and silver crest closely. Stuffing a whole delicate thinly petaled apple flower into her mouth, she got up from her seat in a swift motion, dropping the cup of fruit off on a bedside table in the other half of the room, which was where his eyes left her, diverting instead to the fireplace. It was lit merrily with what he recognized as her own fire, and must have been left over from before, never having gone out in the first place. When she returned, she was wearing something that made his eyes widen.

Covering her mouth as she swallowed, and pointing to her neck with her other hand, she stood in the center of the room to ask, "Is this from you, as well? Oh—what the—?"

Several inches at the end of the green and silver scarf that she had just appeared wearing around her neck seemed to split from its main fabric and fall to the floor, landing in a mostly unraveled heap of thread that threatened to take the rest of the scarf down with it. Still stunned, he took out his wand and waved it so that the now useless messy scrap of scarf fully vanished, back to where he had originally conjured it from thin air, and where its magically summoned form had been trying to return after having been kept for too long... Kept, though, it had indeed been...

"Oi—what's this? You give me one thing and take something else?"

"I... That's months old," he said distractedly. His concentration strayed further from the room still, as he suddenly had an idea and flicked his wand again, to no immediate effect.

"Months old from what?" Freya asked in confusion, looking increasingly annoyed by losing more than just the physical thread of what was being discussed. But he merely stared back at her in silence, waiting with a cool grin that broadened as her frown deepened.

"You might want to open your door," he offered helpfully.

Before she could even take a step towards her office, however, a dull thud landed against the window, making them both jump. He let her go to it herself, not wanting to spoil the fun. Good thing that she had reason to have picked a window style that opened so easily. She marched back over after retrieving the much more intact and stable-looking scarf of the exact same pattern.

"How—What—" she started, sitting down on the couch before him, her hands gesturing all around with each end of the fabric clutched in her fingers so that it looked like she was trying to wrap up an invisible gift and couldn't remember how to tie a bow. "Just what do you think this is—Christmas or something? You can't just summon more gifts out of nowhere at the last minute!"

"Why not?" he mused simply. His expression fell however as his eyes traced over the scarf once it stopped moving, noticing how dull it looked, and he hastily went on. "That's... even older, actually, it might not be—" He watched her finger find a threadbare hole, poking straight through. "...You don't have to keep it, it was just an—actual scarf—not a conjuration."

"Is this yours?" she asked, raising her eyes to him with even more surprise. "Do you just get this stuff for free being a Head of House or something?"

"No... That one is from when I was a student." And it had been stuffed in the bottom of his trunk since returning here to teach, having never left the trunk, which had been similarly stuffed in the bottom of a closet even before then. He supposed he could have easily just gotten her a brand new one later from the Slytherin store room, possibly even for free, but he had known his trunk was currently open in his bedchamber. And he wasn't exactly using this one. And—apparently—she took quite good care of the things he gave her.

He watched as she checked with him for permission, looking meek for one of the few times he had seen since her resurrection, before she gingerly wrapped it around her shoulders, over her long hair, so that it bundled up around her neck.

"Um... If it's alright then, I'll keep this one. This castle's rather drafty."

He highly doubted that the cold was really bothering her, but he slowly shrugged a shoulder all the same, letting her believe that perhaps he didn't know any better.

Suddenly, her face brightened and she clapped so loudly that it echoed up to the ceiling, making him blink in surprise.

" _Oh!_ You know what? As long as you're doing this today—I've just remembered—" And she hopped right back up, retracing her steps to her half bedroom.

He wondered if she had just remembered the past four months, or perhaps her entire life, given how excited she had gotten, and he couldn't help but openly stare after her this time as she bustled around to a large wardrobe.

"I totally forgot," she went on loudly over her shoulder, "I've just had so much to read, you've no idea. I can't believe I have to learn all this stuff before—oh, where is it—which one—?"

He watched as she took not clothes, but boxes from the wardrobe, stacking them on the floor so she could get to what she was after.

"Ah! Come here, come here," she called, turning to wave him over with a smile, which he didn't return at the idea of having to walk into unfamiliar private territory, but he did cautiously follow as directed.

He stopped just before the full view of her bed and some kind of vanity threatened to draw his eye, instead staring as if with blinders straight ahead until she had stepped up and placed something else to distract him into his hands.

He frowned at the plain-looking box, about to open it when its lid was slapped down.

"No, not yet," she warned with a pointed finger and a mischievous look before diving back through the boxes.

"What..." But he was only given more questions before he could even ask his first, as a second box, matching the other, was piled into his arms.

"Hang on, there's supposed to be..." She rifled through more loose things. "Oh, shoot, I was meant to post this... How am I supposed to keep all this straight? Just do it beforehand instead of leaving it all till now!" With a sigh she finally came back up and placed down a smaller third box, in a different color, plus an envelope—and then snatched the small box back out from under it. "Wait! No, no, this is for—" She patted at her robes, remembered she had a box in her hand, which he noted rattled just slightly at the movement, and then used her free hand to pull out a list that had been folded in her pocket, squinting at it for a moment. "Ah... Yes, that's all for now—okay!" The hectic look was wiped from her face, replaced with a chipper smile before she turned around and tossed the little box back into the wardrobe, shoving all the rest in after it, and shutting the door again with some effort.

He stood standing completely still with his two boxes and envelope in hand, feeling like he might want to start organizing his own things better after today.

As she took off for the sofa once more, with him trailing after her in a daze, she resurfaced the piece of paper from her pocket and read from it.

"'Severus Snape, potions Master, Head of Slytherin,'" she sat down a second before he did, as he set the boxes onto the table, looking up just as she held up two fingers, "'two flat rectangular boxes in deep blue, and a letter...'" He watched her eyes continue reading, but she must have been skipping some part, "And... Oh! That's your birthday?" She stuffed the paper back into her pocket, looking up at him once more. "So soon after Christmas?"

He blinked in dull confusion. "Yes...?"

"Ohh, that makes so much more sense. Couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was split up into two."

"Two...?" His eyes went back to the boxes on table. "Two presents?"

"Two _piles_ of presents," she corrected, nodding.

He stared from her smiling face as she waited expectantly with her hands on her knees, to the boxes he had just helped carry over.

"I... You didn't have to... do that," he said, only realizing afterward that it was the very same trite reply that people often used after getting a gift; only he fully meant it. It was meant to be him that was making things up to her—and he had barely done an even half-way decent job at that so far.

"Well—don't worry, I didn't!" she said happily. "At least, I don't remember anyway. I'm excited to see what I got you, though—come on, just open it!"

He quirked a brow at this odd situation, feeling like he was in for a world of odd situations if things kept up the way they were, but he leaned forward as instructed, taking the envelope first. He suddenly wasn't sure he could handle being stared at while he read a letter from a woman who no longer existed in memory, only in inked word, and he concentrated on channeling his thoughts into a quizzical frown rather than anything else. But there was only a simple little card containing one line within.

" _No wrapping paper for you! Just open it! -Happy Christmas, Freya"_

He stared down at the card, perfectly able to hear her voice as it was so near exactly what she had just said, unknowingly, out loud. He set it down next to him on one arm of the chair and did as instructed, gently picking up the first box and lifting the lid once it was on his lap.

Before ever having to guess what was inside, he had immediately recognized the box shape as more than likely clothing, and he was now proven correct as the carefully folded-over tissue paper came into view. What surprised him then was the shop's card holding it into place, because the logo was familiar—a clothing store in Hogsmeade, that he had visited not even a full month ago, dragged along, lost in his thoughts, and trying not to pay attention as Freya and the shopkeeper had talked together in low voices, occasionally looking over at him. Apparently their boasting of employing only seamstresses with the best eye had been correct, because the witch must have guessed his sizes from just that. He hastily shoved the tissue paper out of the way and revealed what was beneath.

"Ooo... Clothes?" Freya said, leaning in with interest, and then pulled a face that he could see without even looking up. "Isn't that sort of... boring?"

But as he slowly reached his hand out to touch the black fabric, he didn't find it the least bit boring. He did, however, frown as he felt more than just soft material beneath his fingers... All at once, he snatched up the whole garment, pulling it out and unfolding it, feeling and inspecting with both hands.

It was a robe; a simple handsome sort, plain, but with its own unique little charms to it, such as the short stiff collar and what looked like overly long cuffed sleeves beneath the standard more open ones. And... undoubtedly, though his fingers could find no source other than the fabric itself... it was warm. Within seconds of placing his hands beneath it, the chill of the wintery castle with its drafty stone walls and ancient windows was gone and his fingers were warmed to a pleasantly mild temperature as if caressed by a soft velvet heat.

He could only continue to stare down in open surprise, until Freya finally couldn't take any more of his silence and broke out with, "Well? Put it on!"

"Wait," he said, dropping the robe back into the box at his lap—and then going back to it to carefully straighten it out so that it wouldn't crease, though he had the thought that if it was enchanted one way, it might also be enchanted in others, and might not ever allow such thing as a crease to disgrace itself.

With great care, he set the first box back onto the table, and then took up the second one, giving it a hard shake to remove the lid from the bottom and let it fall onto his lap rather than waste a second. Underneath the matching tissue paper of this one was a matching black traveling cloak, and it held the same sort of warmth when he pressed his hand to it. This time he took an extra second to notice that the fabric wasn't inky black, and he remembered—feeling like he was the one with memory loss at this point, as his mind was pulling up more memories than Freya must be going through in her diary—a time when she had changed a tie around his neck from an ill-suited unyielding blackest of blacks, to a softer charcoal black. Comparing the new robes to his current ones, he saw that the shade matched perfectly, just that these were clean and new, with no variation from wear.

He stood up at once, setting the cloak back down. With just a hint of self-consciousness, glancing at Freya's completely unabashed face as she continued to stare openly at him, he unfastened his robe and slipped out of the sleeves to just his black button-down shirt and trousers. He stared back down at her with a pointed look, curling his lip, as her eyes did a once over on him, but she was apparently so full of holiday gift-opening cheer that she was not interested in taking hints. Discarding his old robe over the back of the chair and taking up the new one, he slipped into it with some fumbling as he figured out the new fastenings at the front.

It was as if he had put back on his old robe; not new and stiff, but warm and worn. He tested out the sleeves at different heights on his hands, flexing his fingers to tuck them just under the hem and momentarily warm them up too. Letting his arms finally hang down, his gaze came back up to Freya staring even more openly at him if at all possible, with her mouth open in delighted surprise.

"Oh... It looks—that's—" She waved her hand at him in a motion that was completely meaningless to him. "You look—like you're wearing robes," she finished, her brows creasing just slightly over her grinning face, and then crumpling completely as her gaze trailed away in apparent confusion at her own words. He narrowed his eyes at her, not at all reassured that he hadn't somehow transformed into an atrocious monster. Marking her as useless, he instead crossed the room back to the other side, remembering the vanity and its decently sized mirror.

He did indeed look like he was wearing robes, as he smoothed a hand over the front and slightly fixed the collar... and then ran his hand back over his chest, still finding it odd to feel the fabric so strangely warm, but not at all unhappy with it. Much apart from however he looked, he felt earnestly... cared for. Like he had just been hugged, and the feeling was still lingering. He realized it was what he had been yearning for since after the first night of December...

"It looks good on you."

He started as Freya appeared beside him in the mirror, and he briefly looked down at her physical form before shifting back to the easier to handle reflected one.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and meant it, to his surprise. He frowned thoughtfully at the image of them, her in her brown skirted robes that must have been a back-up pair of the ones he had damaged and wearing his old Slytherin scarf loosely around her shoulders, and him... He squinted, and then peered back to his side... and down.

"You really are short."

The look she directed at him was of such absolute offense, one might have thought that he had thrown her gifts on the ground and called them trash, with a stomp for good measure.

"I'll fight you," she stated so matter-of-factly he had to suppress a laugh, making her step back to turn on him. "I don't know what you're so pleased about! I'd do it if I had my magic back." She stomped off, muttering something that sounded like "so rude" and "can't just call people short," leaving him to blink slowly back to the mirror where he now stood alone, sorely missing a time when she might have playfully slapped his arm and joked back with him. He followed back to the sitting area at half her pace, but didn't retake his seat.

"So... No luck then on getting your magic back?" he asked with casual concern, trying not to make it obvious that he was much more interested in her getting something else back at the moment. She shook her pouting face, sinking herself further down the back of the couch until she looked to be melting.

"I can't even Apparate," she said glumly. "I tried to walk down to find some food earlier, but there were people in the Hall, and so I left to come right back, yeah?" Not fully convinced that this was a perfectly normal reaction to finding other living people inhabiting a public area as she made it sound, he nodded once slowly. "And then I got lost on my way back, but I couldn't ask anyone for help because... you know... can't even remember their names. No idea who's who. Would have just been awkward." She absently pulled the scarf up over her lowered chin, fully covering her mouth as she stared out at the basket of fruit on the coffee table and mumbled through the wool, "So... it's a good thing that you got me this, actually, or I'd've probably starved... Thank you... Shame I'm going to thoroughly demolish it; it really is beautiful."

As he watched her thoughtful face from the side, with the scarf making her hair fold over itself in long loops, the green complimenting its fiery color and making her look like some sort of perfect little Christmas decoration herself (he was certain if she looked up at him that he could confirm that her eyes were on par with the glittering gold ornaments that hung on her tree, as well), he felt a strong urge to tell her that it wasn't the delicate and colorful fruit that deserved that title. But, more importantly, he thought he now understood why she had been so happy to see him at the door if this was what her past day had consisted of.

"Would you... like me to show you around?"

She looked up as if he had offered to buy her a whole orchard of fruit with house elves to prepare it into new and interesting dishes for her every single day, throwing him quite off as the bright daylight from the windows lit up her eyes, ensnaring him in place. He had been wrong; her eyes were more dazzling than any simple little ornament.

"Really? You haven't... you know, got anything better to do today?"

With utmost certainty that he couldn't possibly be doing anything more important, he shook his head.

It was a long walk up and down the same stairs several times; to her own classroom, the library and its offshoot private one for teachers, the staffroom, the Great Hall and her pointed-out seat at the staff table at its head (which made her cringe rather disconcertedly); before, finally, they were on the ground floor, and he hesitated just a bit before leading her down into the dungeons to his own office, watching her pace around it just as she had the first time, though without complaining that it looked different from Slughorn's set up.

He left her there for a moment as he popped into his bedchamber to drop off his clothes, placing his boxed up old robe onto the bed and going to hang up his new traveling cloak—before realizing, in the much different dungeon air, that there was still a scent of spice.

He halted his arms where they were holding the cloak in midair above the hook, then took a step forward to confirm. Then he freed one hand to lift the front of his new robes as well.

He smelled like a warm autumn candle shop.

Standing still in front of the coatrack, staring at nothing, his mind pulled up the memory of his mother's magazines, containing tips for household spells including to clean one's clothes.

He deliberated for a second longer... and then decided that he had better take his new traveling cloak with him, actually, since there was still light left to continue Freya's tour onto the grounds next, and stepped back out.

When he returned to his office, he found her as he had once before, though several seconds sooner in the act, as her hand was still on the locked cabinet door.

He flattened his expression at her, but she didn't seem perturbed, only tugging once on the lock.

"Would you mind popping this open for me?"

"Already back into old habits, are we?" he said, assuming she wouldn't have a clue what he meant, but was surprised when she grinned in a secretive way in response. She stepped back to let him get his key into the lock and open it for her as asked.

"You know," she said as she rummaged around, carefully picking through the various bottles and bags of ingredients, "I haven't gotten very far through that diary, I was kind of skipping around, but there was something that I was curious about... Ah—"

He watched, suddenly knowing exactly what it was that she pulled out just as the little glass vial of golden liquid came into view, and he held his breath. She held it up for inspection, tilting it this way and that before popping its cap and taking a disgusted whiff.

"Well," she said cheerily, "that's just the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life." And she put it back in its place, shutting the cabinet with finality. "And... judging from your face, you really had no idea?"

He blinked, pulled from his shocked stare at the cabinet. "I—No. Of course not. How did you..." He narrowed his eyes, but not at why she would know it was there, as he now realized she must have been checking for it on that first night in his office, but how she had already known that he was unaware... But then, of course—she had been also checking to make sure he hadn't used it, labeled it, or otherwise sold it for all it was worth. When she had found it put away neatly, with no inclination that he was hiding it in particular from her, she would have known and noted it down accordingly.

"I guess... I was testing you a bit when you first got here," she explained, watching his face. "The way it was written made it seem like there hadn't been any signs of bizarre experiments or whatever, so I judged you as having not looked too deeply into... err, certain things."

He stared at her. But he _had_ looked too deeply into things; he had ripped through every book on phoenix lore and potions made with tears, failed attempts to bottle song, various fabled potions that had no known sources or instructions to back up that they were even real. He had been out searching for ways of prolonging life, of cheating the grave consequences of it, just like many others around him had been at the time. But he hadn't found anything to do with the blood of a phoenix. The only way he could have researched that, would have been to hunt one down himself...

"And you haven't," she said, almost addressing his thoughts and making him have to scramble to remember what she had last said. "Right?" He gave a small shake of his head, not taking his eyes off her as she continued to stare back at him. "And... you're not going to if I leave that in there, are you?" He shook his head again, meaningfully slow this time. Her eyes flicked down and back up at him, her mouth screwing up to one side. "Hm... Well, that's good enough for me." And she shrugged, turning back to the door—but before she got halfway across the room she was spinning back around.

"Oh! And also," she fished through the deep pockets of her robes, pulling out her own keyring and shuffling through it. She removed and held out a single thick key, distantly familiar to him only in the form of a spare he had seen Madam Pince use, as he reverently took it. "Nicked that off you the first night you got here—apparently right in front of you, can't believe you missed that. Not sure if I ever told you, again, didn't read that far, but—" She shrugged with an innocent look up at him. "I thought it was weird that I still had it." She looked down at his hand, still frozen where it was outstretched as if unlocking an invisible door, until he finally moved to drop the key into his pocket, and followed her back into the dungeon hallway in stunned silence.

Out on the snowy grounds, as they made their way at a slow meandering pace, not having much of a destination other than where he pointed out certain landmarks, he felt acutely aware of the woman walking at his side, more than even during the days when he used to be most apprehensive around her. He now felt that if he happened to look away for too long, he might miss something else, and every time his mind got caught up wondering indeed what other things might have been happening right in front of him, he would snap himself out of it and refocus on the bright flame of red hair to his side, standing out so stark against the white landscape, as if noticing her for the first time.

Before he knew it, they were walking along a very familiar path towards the lake and he had to stop staring at her so much, doubling down instead on not letting his mind wander off.

A sudden stuttering clipped breath pulled his attention back, and he all but stopped in his tracks.

His mouth fell open, but he caught himself before he asked without thinking, instead letting the corners of his lips curl up and speaking with a much more purposeful taunt to his voice.

"Oh? Are you cold?"

She shot a narrowed glare at him and he stood grinning smugly, perfectly warm in his new clothes, pleased that he now knew what certain circumstances she got cold in.

"Stuff it," she said, rolling her eyes so hard that her chin tilted back. But she was shuddering immediately afterward as the cold air slipped in where the angle had separated the scarf from her neck, and she forcefully yanked it back up all the way to her frosted pink cheeks. "Ugh, I hate this," she said, her speech muffled, "it's like being sick but I can't take anything for it."

"Do phoenixes get sick?" he asked, mildly curious.

"I've seen enough sick people to bet that it's this awful."

He studied her wincing eyes and her shivering frame, watching her shove her ungloved hands deep into her pockets. He raised a brow and her scowl returned before he even ventured his first tentative step towards her, taking three back of her own.

" _No_. I'm fine, thanks."

He inclined his head and gave a small unconvinced nod before continuing right along.

As they kept on down the trail, he noticed her getting closer and closer to his side, but he said nothing, and didn't make any more attempts to bother her.

They lapsed into the kind of silence that made him feel the need to anxiously fill the gap, so used to her normally endless talking as he was, that it only felt natural when there was work to preoccupy her with. He held his tongue for now though, because the subject he wanted to broach was perhaps even more treacherous than the thin ice currently covering the lake, and because he was trying to just enjoy this side of her that seemed to be as at peace with being quietly at his side as she was to jabber on about every manner of personal thing to him at other times. At least that much had not changed.

The parts that had, however, felt like they surely should have been too important for him not to have noticed until now. But, apparently, he hadn't been open to appreciation then.

"So," he said with apprehension into the echoing still air, "have you... had a chance to speak with Dumbledore again?"

This won him an immediate freshly minted glare from her.

"I see..."

His footsteps stopped as hers did, coming to a gradual standstill just beside a dormant tree, overhanging the lake in a way that must have filled the waters below with leaves during fall. He watched from the corners of his eyes as she stared out over the icy water with her scowl only showing in her gaze, her mouth still covered in green and silver.

"I'm fine with the job," she said at last, her voice quiet at first, but slowly gaining traction as she kept on, "I'm fine with having to live in a castle, even though I'd prefer to be outside—not right now though, obviously," she shivered again, "I'm even fine with not going on the stupid bleeding mission or whatever. I'm just... not fine—with not... being myself." Her voice seemed to get caught in the wool on her last words, so that the frigid breeze almost carried it away over the lake.

He tried to find something he could say to this, some comforting thought that of course she was always herself no matter what, but it all sounded so utterly banal he couldn't get the words out. He thought he understood quite well what she meant, though.

"It's not even... that much..."

His attention stayed on her, but she kept her eyes cast down as she spoke, her voice even smaller than before.

"I did talk to him yesterday. Asked him about what memories he even had. It's not much." She shrugged. "Just what he's seen of me over the years. It's his memories. Not even mine..."

His gaze held on her for a moment longer before he, too, turned away towards the lake, feeling suddenly hopeless. He hadn't had much hope to begin with, though. Part of him, originally—before they had returned to the castle and he had still been in a frenzied panic as his place in the world teetered drastically—wanted to believe that they would return and Dumbledore would just simply... raise his powerful wand and command everything back to how it should be. Even if that would have included his place being much less free, if it would have set the world back onto a course that was less desolate than this, he would have been able to make do.

With the last little scrap of an idea, he asked, "And... your diaries?"

She tilted her head back and forth, scrunching up her nose under the scarf. "Apparently... you'll never believe this... but I wasn't too keen on keeping them for a really long time. I've only got a handful from the past few years, and the earliest one is mainly just me talking about useless things. I only read one page of it; bunch of rambling shite worse than this year's one."

He nodded forlornly, his eyes unfocused. There was some tiny minuscule chance that those pages held some magic within that was made for returning the memories recorded on them back into the mind they had come from—but he knew he was just clutching at straws at this point.

He knew how to alter memories—erase them, muddle them, implant false ones, break through certain magics that locked the mind, and which ones weren't capable of being broken through—but there wasn't anything to be done about what was lost; what had been burned away and left as nothing but ash. The very foundational magic of her being wasn't something he imagined would bend more easily than any other. The mind didn't work in such a way that everything would click neatly back into place like he so wanted it to, like he had hoped it would while spending the day leading her all around the castle, showing her to all the places they had sat together for hours. Even if she allowed Dumbledore to share his memories with her, even if she read every inked word that her own hand had penned, it would never be as if she herself had experienced it. The mind could only know, but not feel it etched to the body...

He frowned suddenly, remembering something she had said the same night that she must have rifled through his cabinets to find her own vial of blood in them. He still couldn't puzzle out precisely what she had meant, though, or how it would fit into the logic of this. Except, perhaps...

He entertained the wild idea that he could somehow deliver a physical reminder that would unlock something in her memory—before having to stop himself from outwardly cringing at how drastic his thoughts were getting. That wasn't how the very meticulously lawed and fundamentally natural force of magic worked—that wasn't how anything worked. He was just losing his own mind, standing in the same spot they had stood less than a month prior, knowing he had never gotten a chance to talk to her about what had happened—or apologize for kissing her so roughly—or even fully let himself think too much about it at all beyond a kind of blind buzzing feeling.

It felt like part of his own mind had been burned away to ash in the past few days, a grey slag cleared away leaving behind only the raw glimmering ore that had always been there, but had yet to be fully formed into something meaningful.

The words that she had so callously read aloud to him from the most recent entry of the diary drifted back into his mind. He was sure that she had wanted to talk to him, and he now found that he desperately wanted to listen to what she would have said, no matter what it might have been...

He had been casting a hard sideways stare at her without noticing until she looked up in mild surprise at his expression, making him blink and look away.

He was supposed to be leaving her alone, giving her a respectable distance... but perhaps he didn't need to be at quite such a distance. It was nonsensical, but he simply wanted to reach out and physically close the gap that he couldn't sort out a way to close mentally. Plus, he reasoned, she did look awfully cold and pathetic standing there as a freezing phoenix. So, he carefully shuffled his boots sideways in the snow, and stepped closer, even as she was steadily lowering her brows at him.

"Oi, I'm—I'm fine, really, I'm not cold—"

The air was cleared from the sounds of crunching snow again as he paused, inspecting her wincing expression but noting that she hadn't backed away. He almost took another step, but then thought of a better idea, and instead braced himself as he carefully spread his arm out to one side, holding up half of his thick outer cloak away from his body to form a little alcove—and waited.

She looked him up and down, thoroughly appalled, but he wasn't giving in to embarrassment at his actions so easily. The fresh air coming in was threatening to ruin the warmth from his robes, though, and he hoped she hated being cold as much as she hated the rain so that he wasn't doing this for nothing.

Eventually, with her head facing the other way as if she might just accidentally be stepping without knowing where she was going, she inched her way towards him—and then all at once bundled herself up tightly to his side, making him nearly forget that this was what he had been trying to accomplish and almost jerk away in surprise.

As he dropped his arm over her shoulders, so carefully that he was still keeping his fingers raised, he found himself very glad that her head was angled so resolutely straight down at the ground, because he wasn't sure how obvious it was that he was biting back a smirk.

He had to quickly sort out how to truly straighten his face though, as she suddenly leaned away from him, giving his robes a scrutinizing look.

"Why are you so warm?" she said with deep suspicion. "Wizards aren't—hang on—"

"It's enchanted," he said with pride for his new gift. The pleased look was wiped off his face though as hers snapped up to look at him, inches away, her mouth hanging open.

"Enchanted with phoenix magic?" she said incredulously. He nodded, holding her gaze. "I gave you—hang on... I made you this? And I didn't make one for myself?" She looked as scandalized as if he had crept through the night and stolen it from her himself, but he was still having trouble adjusting to how close she was and how bright the fading daylight still was, so that he could see every tiny detail of her face.

"Er, I suppose you did," he said, finally looking away.

She settled back in his same angle, staring out across the lake, and he could just make out from the corner of his eye that her brows still hadn't lifted.

"I'm a bloody moron," she said at last.

Remembering how it had gone over last time he had almost laughed at her, he held it in with more effort this time.

"No, really, I am," she insisted, taking his silence in the same way regardless. "I don't know how I'm meant to remember all this shite, and learn all this wand magic rubbish, and... good lord, I have—just—how many students is it? Hundreds? Hundreds of names—and essays—and all this helping people stuff—and—"

"You'll be fine."

Her eyes rolled back up to him and he didn't need to see her mouth under the scarf to tell it was a flat line—but he held his gaze steady this time, meeting her eye, because this at least was something that he confidently knew what to say to.

"You will."

"How do you know?" she asked without any faith.

"Because... I've already seen you do it." Her eyes narrowed further, but she stayed silent and he went on. "I thought you were insane when you first told me you had only been practicing wand magic for a year... but you're actually... not abysmal," he said with a slight smirk, his gaze wandering off as he remembered their demonstration duel in the classroom. "And you're quite good with your students... Better than I am." With calm sincerity, he fixed his eyes back onto hers. "You'll be fine, Freya."

She slowly blinked up at him, her stare now showing only a quiet awe. Every little facet in her eyes was as clear before him as twinkling Christmas lights, the blank canvas of snow behind her making all the subtlety shifting color in her hair and the pink tint to her cheeks pop particularly bright, and he was very grateful that her lips were covered up behind the scarf. He caught himself just before his legs swayed him even closer than he already was and promptly dropped his arm from her shoulders.

So quickly that he almost tripped over his words, he asked something that he had not even thought of in a long time.

"Would you like to go watch a movie?"

But, unfortunately, despite Freya practically dragging him back to the castle as she chattered away about the ingenuity of muggles to catch up to what had been a staple in the wizarding world for centuries, and despite the fact that the wide array of books they laid out in front of the little old muggle television in her office grew so large that they had to move back into the sitting area of her chambers to have room to splay it all out, he couldn't for the life of him manage to figure out a way to actually accomplish the one thing he had set out today with full intent to do for her.

"How is it exactly that you did this in previous years?" he finally asked, looking between the book he had propped open in one hand, and the muggle instruction manual in the other. He set them both down to rub at his temple in annoyance at being defeated by something that he used to be able to do with just a push of a button.

"No effing idea," Freya said rather unhelpfully, lazily eating more fruit from the basket and engrossed in her own book. By the title ( _Turning a Bumpkin Into a Princess Before the Stroke of Midnight_ ), she had given up long ago. She did look equally perturbed as him though, and promptly tossed her book back on the table in a pile he was beginning to notice contained only ones she had deemed useless. "Do you want to go ask Albus?"

He merely glanced up, not lifting his head from where it rested against the heel of his hand, and she sighed. "Me neither. This is hopeless."

He had to agree with her there. He had been counting on her having some inkling of how to get around the standard Hogwarts enchantments as she usually did, because he had already known going in that the castle itself repelled muggle technology, making it quite useless.

Closing his book, he sighed as well, looking around for a clock and finding only the large windows showing black and mirroring the twinkling lights of the room.

"It's getting late," he noted. "Are you sure you don't want to go down for the feast?" She gave him a withering look to which he relented with a small nod—then, with a spark of mischief, thought of something else, and adopted a falsely polite voice as he further suggested, "There's going to be a Christmas party with the staff tomorrow if you'd prefer..." He had to fight back a grin as her face contorted into utmost disgust.

"I'd rather you kill me again."

He would have happily let himself be dragged off to a party if it would have counted towards his thus far, by his own count, woefully low gift score. A basket of fruit and a ratty old scarf seemed quite the pathetic attempt to repay someone for taking their life. Though, by her telling of it, she had been due to die on Christmas day, so he had done her a favor in resetting an awful schedule—which had given him a fresh wave of utter horror to hear her say, and strengthened his will to follow through on this idea. The movie may have been Dumbledore's intrusive suggestion, but he had to admit it was better than what he would have come up with, and he really didn't mind something as simple as watching a muggle film if it would mean so much to her—if he could just sort out how to make it happen.

He leaned heavily onto the arm of the cushioned chair he was sat in, staring down at the piles of books as if he could absorb their knowledge more clearly this way.

"You'd need to get out of the range of Hogwarts," he mused aloud in a low voice.

"Hogsmeade then?"

"It's still a wizarding village," he said, shaking his head. "There isn't anything set up for this." Without a way to make it happen in the magical world, you would have to then just pick yourself up and go into the muggle world; with a whole city, power grid, and muggle houses. But that—

His mouth slowly fell open and his eyes narrowed.

"What?" Freya said, immediately picking up on his change in expression as she apparently hadn't been paying any attention to the new book she had cracked open. "What is it?"

"I... Hang on," he said dismissively, moving his chin into his palm to cover his mouth as if to signal that he wouldn't be making any brilliant speeches yet. He didn't want to say anything to get her hopes up when he hadn't even sorted through the idea himself—and he really wasn't too keen on it. But it would make everything very simple... Almost.

He took one last look at her, trying to make a decision very quickly on just how far out of his way he was actually willing to go for her, but it wasn't a very fair assessment with her eyes staring wide and hopeful at him.

Shifting his gaze so that it was instead glued to the fire, and muttering so low into his knuckles that he wasn't sure he would be deciphered, he finally shared his piece.

"I... know of a muggle house..."

He didn't need to move his gaze back then, because Freya had jumped up to place herself in his line of sight, holding her arms out to him in celebration.

"Severus! Why didn't you say so sooner? Let's go then—"

"We can't," he shot over her enthusiasm with a scowl. "Leaving is exactly how I got into this—"

"Oh—who cares, it's Christmas, I'll talk to Albus about it later," she said in a rush, waving him off, and then bounced on her heels. "A muggle house! What's that like?"

He closed his eyes for a second, turning away from her as the regret of ever mentioning this started to sink in. "It's... not entirely a muggle house, but it is... It would work."

His reluctance was apparently putting a chip in her excitement, as she had ceased bouncing and was looking down at him with skepticism.

"What sort of house is it then?"

Suddenly finding the need to put his hand up to smooth the edge of his hair, only slightly covering his face, he spoke down to his chest, "It's... my house." When there was no response, he looked up to find her not following this and continued with a deep sigh, "The house that I grew up in. I own it now." He clipped off any further explanation, but he could see her working out the missing pieces as she stared upward as well.

"Ohhh... So, it was your parents' house, but... they don't live there anymore?"

He nodded, keeping his eyes on her now to see just how much she was getting from this. As if by old habit, he felt a twinge in his gut wondering if she would be chatting away all these secrets later, as it had been Dumbledore's confusion about the details of his home life sparking much of this whole mess. His tiny lie, falsely confirming that he was going to this very house to see his mother, had set Dumbledore off thinking he was lying about something much bigger, when he had only been covering up that she was living somewhere else at the moment. Which might have made his whereabouts unknown, sure, but he was still bitter at it being anyone's business. Especially not someone who only had very outdated information about his business.

"They're not even visiting for Christmas? So, I can't meet them or anything?"

Shocked from his thoughts, his eyes snapped up to her, his head slowly following as well at a lag.

" _No_ ," he said in no uncertain terms, " _you cannot_."

"Aw, alright... I don't ever see my parents anymore. We don't keep in touch with ours like you do."

"That certainly makes sense," he said under his breath.

Her face suddenly looked defensive, and he remembered which version of Freya he was talking to here.

"Are you making fun of me?" she demanded.

"No," he said, already taking a deep breath to stand from his chair and smoothly remove himself from this line of confrontation. "But if you're truly serious about this, then we had better go and see if it's even possible." He was going to assert that he would only agree to this if Freya actually stayed put in the tower while they asked permission to leave the castle, when he noticed the particularly devious look forming on her face.

"Or," she said, grinning darkly up at him, "we could... _not_ tell him."

He held her gaze for a hard moment. " _Or_ ," he countered with potent sarcasm, "I could get to spend Christmas with all my internal organs intact... by _not_ provoking your dear old friend to eviscerate me."

She blew this away with a nonchalant puff and a wave. "Evisceration? Nothing I couldn't fix, no worries." Then her eyes returned to his with a challenging glint. "Unless you're... scared."

He had half a mind to channel McGonagall's terse glare and tell her she should know better than to act like this as a teacher, but, well, she had worked as a loophole around Dumbledore once already, and he found that he still had a healthy craving to break this rule that he didn't agree with in the first place—and besides, this would be plenty harmless given he had practically been ordered to do it...

As he stared back, meeting the dancing light of excitement in her eyes, he already knew what his answer would have been no matter what.

"As you wish then."

It took some time to collect everything they would need, as there had never been something so expensive as a television set up in his home, despite being equipped with the power for one—and because he had grown increasingly apprehensive about what they would find once they got there, making him deliberate over meaningless things while Freya was starting to question if he had made the whole thing up.

Eventually though, after some hasty planning, he was being faced with only the more urgent problem of trying to disentangle Freya from his arm after Apparating them both into a darkened living room. She hadn't liked it much when he had brought them to the castle the other day, either, and he found it similar to trying to walk under an umbrella in the rain with her—or perhaps to transporting a large cat with no cage.

" _Get—off_ —we're here," he hissed, focusing on getting his wand arm free first and foremost.

"Where exactly is 'here'? It's pitch black!"

"No, it isn't— _quit_ —" He yanked his other arm free and used it to find her shoulder in the dark, holding her at bay while he got his bearings. Only streetlamps glowing orange through the half-open curtains gave him light to look around, but there wasn't much he needed to see. Everything was mostly as it had been left some months prior, untouched and unwanted—including some leftover photos lined up on many of the shelves of the encircling bookcases, whose movement caught his eye even in the low light and had him grabbing Freya suddenly back to him as he raised his wand.

"What—Excuse me?" she said in irritation. "Could you make up your mind?"

She tried to get out of his grip, but he stepped around her as if in an awkward dance, diverting her angle away while he turned every single little photo around in its frame, and then waved his wand again to clean up the place for good measure, realizing that it had probably been collecting dust.

Sure that this was as good as it was going to get, he let go of her with a sigh.

"Alright."

"Um," Freya spoke up into the darkness, "forgetting something?"

"...Right."

He didn't need his wand for this part, turning around and giving the switch behind him—practically hidden between two bookshelves so that he had to wedge his hand in—a flick. Good thing that it had been left so untouched, as the power still appeared to be working; though as he eyed the hanging lantern now rendered useless as what it had been put in place to cover up glowed with unnatural light, he thought he rather preferred the place in the dark. Freya, however, seemed immediately enthralled with the overhead electric light—and every single other thing to be found from floor to ceiling, gasping and turning around in a circle as her eyes bounced around eagerly.

"Wow...! It's... completely ordinary! Hang on—but this just looks like a wizard's house, doesn't it?"

_Imagine that_ , he thought to himself as he rolled his eyes, crossing to a little end table that he could use to set down the miniature television from his pocket. As he was busying himself with returning it to normal size with his wand and setting up the rest, he could just hear her quiet footsteps padding all around the worn rug that took up the entire room.

"So, where are we exactly?" Before he could get out his full testy reply that he had already told her the town and country, she cut him off. "I know, I know, but _really_. Is it a whole muggle village? Can I look outside?"

" _No_ ," he snapped at once, crossing the room to follow her guardedly to where she had wandered towards the front door. She shot him a quizzical frown at the way he appeared about ready to spell the place shut, but he returned it with a stern glare. He had positioned their arrival precisely indoors for a reason—there really wasn't much to be looking at outside.

She was distracted from arguing by a long hanging tapestry on one of the only uncovered strips of wall near the entrance, stepping up to read it while he twitched with the urge to stop her, holding back only as he reasoned that it was perhaps not worth it to fight someone over scraps of information about his life.

"'Prince'?" she read aloud, and then turned back to him, her eyes wide. "Are you a prince?"

He stared at her with a deadpan expression, wondering how someone could possibly misread a family tree so poorly and if he should perhaps take back what he had said about her being fine to teach, but she merely grinned at him, looking quite pleased with her own joke.

"Does this look like where a prince would live to you?" he asked as if to ground her humor back to reality.

She gazed around, but her cursory glance back over everything was apparently missing all the dents in the furniture and the tiny kitchen through the narrow archway opposite as her eyes moved on instead to the stairs—and then straight up them, before coming back to him with a wide devilish smile.

"I dunno... I haven't seen the whole place yet."

"And," he said through his teeth, sidestepping in front of her to finally physically put his foot down on her nosiness, "you won't be. We're just here to do one thing."

"Aw, come on, I can't even get a tour? I'm curious what your room looks like."

He took in a deep breath and held it—then put on a tight, thin smile.

"You'd like a tour? Here..." With an elegantly outstretched arm, he beckoned her closer and took her shoulder in his other hand, guiding her across the room—and back to the sitting area. "This," he said with dripping sarcasm, "is a sofa. Please, have a seat." And he gently pressed her shoulders down until she was seated and glaring up at him with her eye nearly twitching.

"You're not very hospitable," she said with all the excitement sucked from her voice.

"Tea?" he asked in the same mockingly polite manner as he backed into the kitchen.

The second he turned around his face flattened, though he did step up to the sink and stare into it, momentarily considering actually making tea just for something else to do. This was turning out to be much more stressful than it was worth. He should have just broken into a neighbor's house and used their TV and home at this point.

A sudden immensely exaggerated gasp made him whip his head around in a panic, because it sounded much too pleased to be anything good.

Freya was leaning to look at him through the archway, but what she was pointing at was keeping her heels in place—more distractingly though, her face was pulled into an expression of ultimate glee.

"Just look at this wee little Sev! How darling!"

He slowly turned back to the sink, unseeing, his eyes held shut, and a sigh building up in his lungs so deeply that it felt never-ending. In hindsight, permanent sticking charms on all the photos should have been the only solution—or just burning them. Or burning the whole place down.

He stood cemented into place over the sink, staring out the little window there, imagining how long after the war would be appropriate to commit acts of extreme vandalism to muggle property, while listening to Freya rummage around through his personal life with wild abandon.

"You know, it's quite cozy in here; like a library," she commented from the other room, not having to speak much louder than normal to still be heard as it was such a small distance.

Under his breath, while rolling his eyes again, he muttered out a quiet, "Glad you think it's so great," before suddenly squinting and turning around. "What sort of libraries do you often hang out in?" _That you would remember?_

She looked up from her pacing around the room for what must have been her dozenth lap, hands folded innocently behind her back as if she hadn't been touching anything. She shrugged.

"Oh, I dunno. Like the one you showed me earlier; the research one? I liked that."

He watched her eyes gazing around at the books, searching her expression, but it was only blankly curious.

"Though," she continued, "this could use a bit more light, don't you think? It's a shame there's no fire... _Ooo_ , or Christmas decorations!" She spun on her heel and faced him with a hopeful smile. "Do you think you could...?"

His mouth stretched into a reluctant grimace, but something about being asked to perform magic by someone who couldn't at the moment felt so odd that he was almost compelled to comply. Put on the spot to decorate, though, his mind was rather blank as he stepped up to stand in the archway, his wand hovering in the air for a long moment. It was Freya's encouraging eyes staring at him expectantly that gave him inspiration, and, with a few quick motions, he turned the small sitting room into the most charming version of itself he had ever seen.

Her gasp this time was much less audible and much more sincere, as she clasped her hands together underneath her chin and once more stood in the center of the room to gradually spin around with her long hair flowing and her eyes wide and gleaming, thoroughly enchanted.

He really didn't think it was befitting of all this fuss given he had just ripped off her own decorations, with floating lights aligned as if on an invisible string going along the tops of the bookcases all around the ceiling of the room, hanging down like icicles over some shelves (specifically to cover up the higher placed photos on them, which he had sneakily turned back around), and garlands of pine over some of the others (to further bury the frames). It did create quite the elevating effect of coziness to the room though; that, he could not deny. He crossed back to the adjacent wall and flicked off the light switch, so that it was not glaring so unnaturally over the otherwise magical scene.

When he looked back, however, he realized that this may have been a miscalculation.

Freya had ceased her slow circling and was standing perfectly still for once, beaming at him with what looked like all the Christmas Eve joy in the world. It really didn't seem fair for her to be hogging all of it to herself, nor was it fair that her eyes now seemed to sparkle with the lights even though they were being scrunched up slightly at the corners, nor that she should be able to make him feel like it had been worth it to breech his privacy just to see her smile like this. His hand almost darted back behind him to flick the lights on again and make sure he wasn't staring at some holiday card come to life, but she finally moved before he could, bouncing excitedly and taking another look around.

"It's beautiful!" she gushed, and then actually spun herself around in a twirl—which was perhaps not the smartest move in such a small room with so much furniture nearby, as she immediately smashed her foot into the coffee table and was reduced to half height as she bent over to squeeze at the new injury. "It's... It's so beautiful I'm crying," she said, alternating between wincing and smiling.

"That's... really..." But his words were mostly useless as he was saying them into his fingertips, trying without success to rub the grin off his face and slowly nodding as if he had just witnessed the universe coming together in precisely the right manner.

"Stop _laughing_!"

"I'm not," he assured her unconvincingly as his voice betrayed him. "Ah... Need to go... check on the tea—so glad you like the decorations," he said, and excused himself back to the kitchen before he earned himself a future torching by openly laughing at her.

"I think I—ow—could enjoy them better if I sat down," she called from the other room, and he heard her hopping herself over and finally taking a seat of her own volition for once on the creaky sofa.

"Excellent idea," he said, though he was keeping his voice down as he still hadn't fully reigned himself in.

He stood over the sink again, one hand propping him up on the edge of the counter and the other trying without success to smooth down his grin, when his eyes glanced up to the little window and caught sight of his own reflection. His smile, which was wider than he had seen on his own face since perhaps when the childhood photos in the other room had been taken, promptly flattened out in surprise. Frowning, his fingers slowed as if to instead check his face for malfunctioning, hearing Freya's own words echo in his head that she didn't know what he was so pleased about. It was the image of her from just a moment before that floated up in his mind in response, his eyes blurring the sink away to instead go back over every little detail of her warm smile.

When he looked back up, the corners of his mouth were again misbehaving, and he pressed his thumb and forefinger into them as if to pin them down, though it was a bit unnecessary as his expression now only looked uneasy. He pulled the little half-curtains shut, only cutting off the top of his head, and then turned away to exit the kitchen once more without any tea. Thankfully Freya seemed not to question this, only offering up a curt smile as he returned.

"Nothing broken?" he asked smoothly, glancing down with raised brows to her boots hidden behind the coffee table.

Her smile sharpened and she silently raised one foot onto the edge of the furniture to demonstrate that it was indeed still intact, making him notice for the first time that sticking out of the top of her boot was a garish gold tinsel-threaded red and green sock. His eyes narrowed just a bit, but she lowered it once more, and he busied himself with crossing to join her, reaching over the sofa to the window just behind it and closing these curtains as well. Before he sat down, he noted with a glance that she scooted more over to her side of what little space there was available on the small two-cushioned piece of furniture, and he respectfully wedged himself against the opposite arm.

"Wait—so, it's all set then?" she said suddenly piecing things together as she pointed at the contraption he had just removed from his pocket (he had already informed her these things worked by remote control, which she had deemed a muggle's poor attempt at a wand). "We just—we get to watch it now?"

He blinked at her from the sides of his eyes, still facing the television where the remote was pointed, wondering if she was about to make him get up again to truly and honestly make a cup of tea this time.

"Err... Yes."

He wouldn't have thought it possible, but the excitement that lit her face seemed to be so strong it balled her fists up and she looked ready to fight, as if movie-watching could quickly turn to fisticuffs. Then she seemed to remember herself and reigned in her posture, laying her hands flat on her lap.

"Sorry, I just—It's so weird! I don't know what to expect."

"It's... just a movie."

She squinted at him as if he had perhaps suggested that fruit was 'just a weird tree egg.'

"You know," she said with a voice that made him wary, "you talk as if you're used to all this. Just how many movies have you seen exact—"

"Alright, I'm starting."

"What! But I'm not ready—what if it's really bad and I hate it?"

He kept his eyes on the TV as the opening credits began, the fuzzy static image feeling distantly nostalgic, but still he squinted hard. How could someone be anxious about not liking something?

"You won't," he said off-handedly, "you had this one in your office, didn't you?"

At the edge of his vision, he could just see her nervously look away from him and finally direct her attention to the moving image on the screen. He had pushed the little end table earlier so that it was practically up against the larger and lower coffee table, making it less awful to have to stare at such a small display.

But, as the specific opening credits for the movie began to play, and a chorus of foreboding music slowly worked up to a fever pitch, Freya turned her head right back to him with such a deep look of apprehension that he had to pretend to just be licking his lips rather than keeping his grin in check.

"Severus... hang on... what sort of story is this?"

He lazily turned his head to her as if he had barely heard her, raising his brows. "Hm? Oh... I believe it's" —he kept his eyes on her rather than on the screen as the chorus belted out a screeching warning of dark and terrible horrors— "psychological," he finished with a placid grin as the title card clearly stated ' _The Omen_ ' in white lettering against a black background. The look she gave him made him finally hit the pause button for the first time, noting that he hadn't gotten away with this for quite as far as he had hoped. "You did tell me once that this was 'hilarious' and your 'favorite,'" he assured her in a smooth voice.

"Yeah... Right..." She squinted at the screen and then to him. "It just doesn't seem very... _Christmas-y..._ does it?"

He appraised the screen. "Well, it has a cross... and red," he pointed out with mild interest, watching as she looked back to the ominous upside-down black cross bathed in a circle of blood red light—and then turned back to him with enough skepticism that he might have been trying to convince her Santa was real, her brows all the way scrunched down.

Fighting with effort to keep his expression clear for just this one last thing, he leaned back in his seat and asked with the most careful of concerns:

"You're not... scared... are you?"

Her expression fully transformed through several emotions at once, landing on a concealed kind of irritation that he recognized as housing a very quick and biting venom just below the surface should he wish to poke further—but he had had his fun just from that, and finally let loose his mischievous grin.

"It isn't scary, I promise," he said with sincerity, but she looked even more offended.

"You've already seen it!" she said indignantly, turning in her seat.

"No," he corrected, "I'm just familiar with... what sorts of things muggles put out as scary. And it isn't." She didn't look convinced, but she equally looked as if she was about to start asking questions about him again, and he thought it apt to finally inform her of some muggle manners to go along with her muggle movie. "Listen, you aren't really meant to be speaking during these—so could we, perhaps, just get on with it?"

With one last narrowed glare at him, she conceded by turning back in her seat, and he settled himself in as well before again pressing play. And thus, they begun the sinister tale of Damien the five-year-old Antichrist, while surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights in his mother's old sitting room.

Not ten minutes later however, he was forced to pause it once more as Freya neglected to heed his request for silence. It wasn't something she had said, though, and as he turned his head in surprise to meet her guilty eyes, she even had a hand pressed over her mouth.

"Something funny?" he asked, as she had just snorted.

She shook her head, apparently not trusting herself to remove her hand—but as her eyes went back to the screen, and the close up of the dog on it, she had to duck her head away as another soft puff of air left her nose.

"It's just," she started, finally moving her hand away from her mouth just by an inch, "it's... it's not very scary, is it?"

He grinned in full smugness, blinking at her. "Would I have lied?"

"Oh, you definitely would have," she said with her voice low in accusatory sureness, but still grinning. "But... I wasn't imagining it would be... funny. I mean—it's so serious, and then—this woman's just staring down a dog like she's just recognized it as the one that got under the fence when she was a kid; long-lost Alfie or something. And it's just... a normal dog! Not even a magical creature, just some dog. And _what_ was that sound..." She momentarily covered her face as if embarrassed to be watching this—as she should be, he thought.

"Would you like to hear it again?" he asked, already rewinding.

"You can do that?"

But her curiosity for muggle technology was cut short as they re-watched the bizarre scene, and this time she didn't just snort but fell forward covering her face in quiet laughter. He watched with increasing amusement as she had to push all her hair back from her face upon resurfacing, and couldn't look at the screen without further snickering. He hit rewind again.

" _Stop!_ Severus—no—I can't... that bloody _dog_!"

He entertained himself with his new automatic-Freya-laughter button a couple more times, before finally she was reaching over to try and apprehend his toy; unsuccessfully, as his arms were plenty long enough to hold it far out over his edge of the sofa, and she wouldn't get near enough to fully wrestle him for it, though she did beg, and he graciously took mercy on her, hitting play instead.

But the very next minute, the poor woman in the movie had her days of staring at dogs tragically cut short in a shocking scene of her death that had even him dropping his jaw—though it was to stare over at Freya in disbelief, even as she stared back at him with the same expression only far more guilty.

"And you _laughed_ ," he said with reproach. "How _insensitive_."

"Well—how was I supposed to know she was about to snuff it!"

It was his turn to quietly snort now, only his grin was quickly wiped away as he realized her eyes had begun to look particularly glossy and she was staring at him in horror.

"She's not—actually—dead," he hastily asserted, straightening up in his seat and angling towards her as if he could have jumped over and erased her discomfort. "It's all fake, all of it."

Her eyes shown pleadingly at his. "Even the dog?"

His gaze didn't waver from her eyes, but unfortunately not much could be done about his twisting mouth.

"No, Freya... the dog is very real."

He had to fully turn his face away then, both to cover his unrelenting grin and because she was smacking at his shoulder.

" _Shut_ — _up!_ You know what I meant! It's not really an _evil_ dog—or a rare case of animal possession—or an Animagus—or something!"

"Freya," he said with difficulty at keeping his voice even, "you're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, shouldn't you tell me?" She looked to be puzzling out which dark entity could be causing the chaos depicted on screen with all of her scholarly honor on the line, when he took pity on her and offered up a reminder that, "They're just muggles, remember?"

"So then it's just a bloody dog!" she shot back. "Give it a nice dragon steak and be on your way then!"

Despite that he was trying so hard not to laugh, her own face cracked in a half-smile as her eyes searched over his expression, and he abruptly found his seriousness again as he pointed at this.

"You can't laugh. A muggle woman just died."

"You said it was fake!"

"Still... It is rather poor taste, don't you think?"

Their stare was held locked in place for a moment longer—and then she broke first, her cheeks puffing up with laughter as she turned away, causing a chain reaction of him doing much the same in the opposite direction, both unsuccessfully covering their amusement.

"You can't," she said, her voice uneven with mirth, "you can't make me laugh at this, it really is—" Her eyes met his again and her hand was forced back over her mouth, though he could still see her shoulders clearly shaking. With sudden energy, she exploded back up, gesturing wildly at the television. "It was just a bit _too_ sudden—I can't take it seriously when it's trying to force me into it! The music is _so_ dramatic!"

"You'll find that most films lack the subtlety to achieve true honest reactions," he said with a distasteful sneer to the screen. "They always fall back on cheap shocks instead."

There was silence in response, and he glanced back over to her, suddenly uneasy without laughter filling the room. But she was merely blinking at him in surprise, and he couldn't quite fit in an excuse to turn the movie back on in time to stop her asking.

"You're... quite knowledgeable about this stuff, huh?"

"Not really," he said, uneasily shifting deeper into his seat and diverting his eyes back to the unmoving image on the screen. "It's more of... there being an art to making a story believable; presenting it in the correct way to get the right reaction. That simply goes across all forms of..."

"Lying?"

His gaze stayed put, but he shrugged a shoulder. "Manipulation... would be more accurate... though some might not like to accept that word for their actions." Gradually, his eyes shifted back over to her, where she was still staring at him with a harmless expression.

"I'll be honest, the only thing I'm focused on not accepting right now is that the muggles expected me to be scared of some cute little kid."

He grinned. "And a dog."

"Not even a _big_ dog, either. I don't get it."

"If only Trelawney could see this movie... her poor heart would explode."

"Who?"

He gave a brief explanation of the Divination teacher, skipping over any details about actual prophecies, as he found he was quite enjoying himself at the moment and didn't want to ruin it. Freya's look of immediate disapproval after he finished only served to further his agreeable mood.

"You actually told me this was your favorite film on the very night that she read your future and gave you an ill omen of your very own," he finished.

She frowned. "What did she say was going to happen to me?"

"I... don't remember, honestly. Something about you dying, though, undoubted—"

The coffee table he was gazing at lost its focus, and his head cocked an inch to the side. Freya slowly dropped her jaw at him, delicately placing her hand over her neck... And then had to turn her head away as she fell into a fit of laughter that he this time didn't join in on.

"That... That was just a coincidence," he said in disbelief, "she always predicts people's deaths—so of course she would get it right for—"

"Severus!" she said through her laughter. "How many warning signs did you need!"

He stared at her, dumbfounded, and then shook his head.

"At... least... one more would have been nice," he muttered uncertainly, only joining in her sudden renewed burst of laughter at this with a mitigated smile of his own. He couldn't remember ever being in such a small enclosed space with her laughing this much, and the sound seemed to fill up the whole room, making him wince as he was already feeling guilty. She had rolled away from him so that she wouldn't be laughing directly in his face, but she rolled right back when she quieted down, still grinning but now looking intrigued.

"What else did she say in this prediction of hers? I want to know if the rest of it is any good."

He shook his head with high doubts. "It was just an endless bunch of nonsense, you won't get anything out of that."

"No offense," she said, shifting so her shoulder was against the back of the sofa, eyes glinting as she smirked at him, "but I'm not going to be taking your word for it. When was this? Maybe I've written it down." Her hand patted down her robes to his surprise, having not expected her to still be carrying her diary—and then he remembered exactly which day it had been that she had received the prophecy, and talked to him about muggle films—and spent a fair amount of time with him out by the lake.

"I don't remember," he said casually, straightening up and turning his attention back to the television, hoping to distract her.

"Seriously? Aw, well, I'll get to it eventually, I guess."

He stared unblinking into the stuttering static image on the screen, now wanting to hit play on the movie again to give his own mind something to do rather than imagine what would be written there and what her reaction to this would be. If she took judgmental notes on his handling of food, what would her notes on his pathetic wine-drunk kissing be—?

"I'm starting," he said, grabbing for the remote without waiting for her permission.

Thankfully it was indeed very distracting to watch a movie with Freya, as she constantly wanted to talk about things, even though he reminded her this was a two-hour affair and it would be the New Year by the time they finished it at this pace. He was plenty of the problem himself though, as he didn't at all care for the interruptions if it meant hearing her laugh and say ridiculous things about the deservingly ridiculous muggle story. She did still have a problem with wincing every time someone was injured or horribly distressed on screen, but she assured him she wasn't actually upset, it was just an automatic response, and she was getting more used to it. To help her along with detangling the fiction from reality, he began pausing more often to point out obvious things that were fake, such as when a pole came down to supposedly skewer a man—only it was obviously a foot behind him, it was just the angle of the camera creating an illusion with the flat muggle film. And after he explained what film was, she seemed to understand. He also re-introduced her to a phrase that made her laugh just as she had before, and she became very pleased to call everything he explained from then on 'movie magic.' One thing on which they both had very impassioned arguments to make towards the screen was the fake-looking blood, though he challenged that she really shouldn't be one to talk, while she countered that not even hers was pumpkin juice orange nor candy apple red—and besides, gold was a perfectly normal color, not weird at all.

The plot did eventually turn dark enough that Freya calmed down her constant commenting, not even asking him to pause for a long while, sat back against the sofa as she was and looking—if he didn't know any better—to be just a bit tense. It was enough to make him want to tease her again about being scared, and he had been wondering for a while what her reaction would be if he were to drape an arm over her shoulders as he had earlier in the day, only with much less benevolence and many more mocking comments that he was here for her if she needed it.

Barely paying attention to the movie as he was (his eyes were mostly glancing to his side, and more effort was being expended trying to look like this wasn't what he was doing), it was him that first noticed that the vicious animalistic sounds on screen appeared to be strangely echoed from somewhere beyond just the speakers of the television. Frowning, he turned his ear to the side, angled towards the window.

"Did you hear that?"

Startled from her locked stare, she jerked her head towards him and frowned.

"Severus, you can't be serious—"

"Wait—listen," he hissed back, lowering his voice. He heard the sound distinctly coming from outside this time, as did Freya, her eyes widening as he paused the movie for silence. There was some sort of scuffling sound, like rubbish being blown across the street, and he told himself that's all it was as he fully twisted in his seat to get his arm over the back of the sofa and peel back the curtains, Freya following his movements with increasing worry, scooting over to get the same view as him.

They both squinted out into the darkness for the source of the continued noise, until he recognized the sound of a metal bin being rattled and darted his eyes to the correct location.

"It's a _fox_ ," Freya said crossly, rolling her eyes his way to glare at him.

"Well... it could have been a dog."

"And then we'd both have been goners," she agreed with much sarcasm and a dry smirk before turning back around in her seat with an especially hard flop against the back of the sofa. "Really... Can't believe you're trying to scare me..."

He eyed her irked little pout as she stared at the screen waiting for him to un-pause the movie, but he hadn't turned himself back just yet, his arm still where it was within reach of the curtain which he had already let fall shut again. Whether by not noticing or not caring, she hadn't retaken her spot as far away from him as possible, and he bargained that if he was going to do it, now would be the opportunity.

"Perhaps... if you," he started nonchalantly, smoothly inching his hand along the top of the sofa and over shoulders as he turned back around, keeping only his cool sideways gaze on her, "would just admit that you're scared... then I would be nicer about it."

He had been prepared for her to shy away, or to fully scramble herself out from under his touch, flustered or otherwise embarrassed; he was even prepared for her to actually try to fight him, in which case he would have immediately relented—but instead the look she slowly turned to him with was only one of unmistakable confusion and disgust, which was doubled as she turned further to squint at his arm specifically before snapping her eyes back to his.

His confidence withered away all at once, his arrogant grin sliding off his face so that he was now stuck staring back at her silent scowl finding he was fresh out of bold moves.

"I—know what you're really afraid of," he said, trying to regather his composure. She quirked a brow at him, unimpressed, but he was already slipping out his wand and at once the little lines of light all around the room were extinguished, plunging the room into darkness only permeated by the glow from the gloomy image on the screen. He felt her shoulders raise up in defense under his arm, and he regained some of his smirk at the wary look on her face. The only sound was the distant disturbance from the fox outside still making its meal.

But he still was not answered with any protests or defensive remarks, not even to play along with his taunting. Instead, she only continued to stare at him as if he had been speaking another language in an insulting tone. Silence, from her especially, was not something he knew how to properly handle, and he was forced to sit there with exponentially rising discomfort, wishing he could force his arm to give up and move, until, at last, she narrowed her eyes so hard in the dark that he could not even see more than her eyelashes.

"Are you... flirting with me?"

Two seconds more of still silence—and then he was swiftly sliding his arm and the whole rest of him back over to the other side of the couch, firmly against the armrest.

" _No_ —I—" He flicked his wand rather jerkily to reignite the lights and try to erase the scene from having happened. "I was just—being friendly."

"' _Friendly'_? Bit... _overly_ friendly from you."

His brows lowered as hers rose, and his momentary panic subsided somewhat into defense.

"Well," he said with poorly concealed bitterness, "we _were_ friends."

Her expression said she didn't fully believe this, and he thought he recognized why exactly she didn't, and where she would be going with her next question by the tilt of her head, causing him to quickly turn away and cut off her opening to ask it.

He should have never touched her; never even gone near her. In hindsight, he didn't know what on earth he was thinking, nor did he want to be questioned about it. The sheer number of times in the past few days that he had felt drawn to reach out and feel the physical reminder that she was real and solid was suddenly looming over him as an embarrassing amount that he couldn't even tally. It was just because of that, though, obviously; she had almost died in a certain sense, and he simply wanted to check in that she was still perfectly warm and living. It was a small comfort that he hadn't completely ruined things, that she was still entertaining the idea of him being around, and she was still sort of Freya—even if she didn't remember him and things might never return to the way they were.

Except that he didn't exactly know what way things had been in the first place, or how he even wanted them to return to. He just knew if Freya was to eventually voice her question, he wasn't sure he could give a straight answer without lying by omission.

As he chanced a glance back in her direction, what he saw surprised him from his troubled thoughts. Her eyes were up as well, but she fully turned her head away when they caught his, and all he had left to look at was her hand resting palm up on the cushion between them, waiting expectantly for him to notice.

Perhaps he couldn't exactly put into words how things had been, or where they had been going; but perhaps... he didn't need to. Perhaps, things could just be—different—but still going in just the same direction.

Carefully, he inched his hand across the threadbare surface and slid his hand over hers—

And she wrenched her whole arm back, whipping her head around in alarm, making him freeze. Her eyes flicked between his hand and his face, aghast.

"I— _Severus_ , the _muggle wand_ ," she said at last with her voice just as shocked as her face, pointing behind him. "If you aren't going to start the movie, I'll do it."

He stared at her dumbly, then slowly turned to look over his shoulder, where indeed the remote control was on his armrest as he had left it.

The grey buttons all seemed like static before his eyes as he wondered if there was perhaps a vacancy in whatever garbage-stinking hole beneath the earth the fox lived in that he could crawl into and permanently hide.

"I'm... tea..."

"Sorry?"

He didn't explain further, just stood onto stiff legs and walked himself right back into the kitchen, wondering if there was anything of stronger quality to fix into a cup.

As he stared into the cupboard, his eyes not finding anything both for lack of trying and because there wasn't much to find, he wished for a moment that if someone was going to forget about him then those memories could also vanish from his own mind as well, because he was rather done with being the only one left remembering things. There should just be some universal brain rot that went round and collected memories of people whose minds in return no longer think of you—or maybe he already was suffering from a different kind of brain rot. Either way, all he found in the various doors he opened was something his body thankfully knew how to make automatically without much connection from his brain.

"What are you making?"

With reluctance, holding in a sigh, he turned his blank expression towards Freya who was stood leaning against the archway to the kitchen, looking bemused with the corners of her mouth hesitantly rising. He angled the tin in his hand so that the label faced her.

"Chocolate? I was thinking something more substantial since you missed dinner..."

Setting this down on the counter, he got out two mugs from the cupboard as well, holding the second one out to her in question.

"Oh, hot cocoa? Only if it's made with water, please." Her expression muddled in reaction to his, and she added defensively, "What?"

"You may not be up to date," he said with distaste that only further soured his voice, going back to his preparations, "but you've had plenty of milk and other things in recent months."

"What? I have not," she said, half laughing as if this was absurd and he must be in need of some explanation. "I don't eat anything with—"

"Yes," he shot a sharp look over his shoulder, "you do. I've seen you eat entire pastries full of custard."

Her mouth fell open in surprise and he turned back to the mugs with a concealed snide grin, tapping his wand on each to melt the chocolate in the bottom.

"I certainly did _not_. I would never eat anything like that—"

"Meat as well. You seemed to rather enjoy it actually."

" _Bull!_ "

This at least was indeed a lie, because the meat pie she had accidentally grabbed at dinner once had made her run a half of lemon over her tongue for minutes afterward, but she had complimented the flakey crust, so it was close enough. For now, he was quite in the mood to have her be the one upset about something. Stepping to the side, he put on a display of filling both mugs with cream from his wand tip while staring back at her appalled expression.

Once it was complete, he handed one hot mug out to her and said coolly, "Don't worry, it won't kill you."

She looked like she was about ready to take it just to dump it down the sink, but she did at last snatch it up and hold it cautiously under her nose for a sniff. Watching her over the rim of his own mug, he took a careful sip for himself of the thick and rich—properly made, not watery dregs—hot cocoa, letting the warmth fill him and simmer down his jittery and irritable mood.

Leaning against the wall opposite him as he leaned against the kitchen counter, she finally tried a small taste, licking her lips and frowning—and then her expression shifted to quiet surprise which, with a guilty glance over at him, she tried to hide by holding the mug over her mouth, only achieving that she now took another sip out of nervous habit and making her look even guiltier.

He swallowed down his own long drink, not taking his eyes off her, and stretched a quick tight smile her way.

"Perhaps you don't know yourself as well as you thought."

They stood in silence for some time, both emptying their cups at a leisurely pace and avoiding eye contact for the most part. It wasn't until Freya fully lowered her cup from her mouth to hold at waist height and caught his eye again that at last the lull was broken.

"This is... really nice," she said quietly down to her cup, avoiding his eyes again after getting his attention.

"Even with milk?" he taunted in a similarly low voice, the subdued bite to it stemming from his thoughts still being on what had just stupidly done on the couch, replaying excruciatingly in his head.

In the warm light cast from the living room, he watched her glance up at him with a scowl that he would have happily returned just then, only hers didn't hold its edge for long at all, and her gaze shifted back down to her hands in surrender.

"I guess... I've just never tried it."

Her face still showed a small amount of displeasure, but he was finding it more difficult to discern the source the more he searched. She took him by surprise when she lifted her gaze and jumped back on the topic he had been trying to escape.

"So... we were friends?"

He lowered his brows and merely blinked at her.

"Err... _are_ —friends?" she tried again, wincing. When he still didn't answer—as he wasn't sure what to say other than a sour retort that he didn't feel could solidify in his mouth sweetened with chocolate and her expression so far from hostile—her eyes drifted away to the rest of the kitchen and over its odd mix of both common wizard necessities and muggle foundations. She found her voice again while staring at the cheap tiling on the floor.

"You know... to be honest, I thought you were just doing all this because Albus made you."

It took him a moment to turn this information over in his head.

"And you—just went along with it anyway?"

"Well," he watched her thumbs twiddling at the rim of her mug, "it was all... still very thoughtful." Her eyes rose to fix him with a searching stare this time. "A little... too thoughtful."

He held her gaze, feeling weary with the deep irony of this. At least it was something that he directly understood.

"No," he said in a hard but hushed tone, "I wouldn't pretend something like that. I did this because I knew it's something that you wanted from before. Because we're friends."

Her wide eyes shown in the low light, studying his face. Then she bit her lip and attempted a slow smile, her shoulders hunching in a way that made his arm remember the feeling, though he was trying to focus on her agreeable expression.

"Then... is it alright if we go finish the movie?"

Once it was all well and truly over, and both of them were sitting back on the couch with tensed limbs and nearly mirrored grimaces (Freya had her mouth hung open), he slowly turned to her with inquiry as to what her thoughts were now. She didn't look nearly as amused as earlier, only stating that "Doesn't look too good for the poor Americans, does it?" to which he dropped the bombshell that perhaps she could find out in the sequel, making her jaw drop thrice as far and his grin come back despite himself. He had been planning to release a different kind of information to her once it was over, specifically that this film had been most assuredly cursed and multiple people had suffered very real damages from the filming, but he rather found that her excitement was more entertaining than ruining her innocent fun just to scare her. Plus, he had already lied about having supposedly not seen it before, so it would have been too close to revealing this.

After listening to her animated retelling of her favorite scenes and dodging her pestering questions pertaining whether or not he would just admit that it hadn't been at all bad for a muggle-made production, things calmed down until they were simply sitting on the couch trailing the conversation beyond just the movie, and he was beginning to feel uneasy about the way she pulled her feet up to sit more comfortably on the couch as if the thought of leaving anytime soon hadn't crossed her mind. Part of him was still feeling as if he wanted to get away from her to go pound some sort of final understanding through his thick skull—and part of him was worried he was going to somehow, beyond his will, do something stupid again. Both of them were sitting with their backs to the armrests of the sofa, but he could always slip up with his words by blurting out that he knew how soft her lips were or something that was apparently on his current level of ineptitude.

As it was, when she smoothed her hands over her long skirt folded up with her legs and peeked up at him through her lashes, her leading question had his heart beating more than he thought was entirely necessary for this situation.

"Can I ask you something?"

His eyes darted around her face for some clue as to where this was going, but she was only gazing innocently back at him. He shrugged a shoulder and indicated for her to go on.

"Was I," she squinted and tilted her head around as if trying to decide on the words, before coming up with a rather bluntly stated, "was I a prat?"

His eyebrows slowly raised up his forehead before coming back down in concern, the corners of his mouth rising. She cocked her head in further question and he had to purse his lips, his eyes narrowing and traveling away towards the ceiling as if in deep contemplation, though he kept her face in the edge of his vision. Her expression dropped to a hard deadpan as he held his silence for a much longer than necessary moment.

"Not really," he finally determined with a casual air, turning back to watch her smirk in an unamused fashion. He let up just a bit. "Only about certain things. Otherwise, no, I wouldn't say you were a prat."

"What would you say I was then?" she pressed.

This time he did have to seriously think, as well as pause before delivering his more truthful answer, as he wasn't sure how she would take it.

"You were... a bit annoying at most." He kept his eyes on her, watching her chew this over.

"Same as now?" He folded in his lips to keep from grinning and then nodded once, but he needn't have worried it seemed, as she apparently had a self-awareness of just how obnoxious she was and merely looked to be after the comparison itself. "Well, that's the same then..."

This struck a slow dawning note in him and he frowned as she stared down at the sofa, too caught up in her own thoughts to notice.

"What is it exactly," he asked, gently trying to pry into whatever she was thinking, "that you're trying to figure out?"

She looked up and then almost as quickly away, her eyes traveling around the room in a slow horizontal line. Finally, she shrugged and shook her head.

"I don't know... Just... why I would ever do all this—why I would change my mind. And if it's because... I started remembering things. And—if I remember things now, will I change like that—and—I don't know."

Her eyes came to rest back on her hands, and he was glad for the moment it gave him to straighten out his face, because his brows had been tugged too tightly, and he didn't want her to think he was pitying her after such sharing of personal business. Before he could sort out at all what to say to this, and though he felt a strong desire to speak his piece, she added one last thing in a small voice, most unlike her.

"It sort of feels like... you know me better than I know myself."

"No," he said after only a heartbeat, making her look up from her lap into his eyes of calm conviction, "I don't." Her mouth stayed quiet, held in a small line, waiting for him to go on. "You... were secretive. The only thing that I really knew you liked was..." His eyes glanced over to the television where the tape had been taken out and placed on top of it. Food was another thing, and he didn't want to bring up the fruit incident again, but it did still make his face twitch that this was all he would have been able to scrounge up that she liked. Perhaps a bottle of Blackthorn wine, but he really did not want to encourage drinking around her ever again.

His gaze drifted away from the TV, but it didn't go back to her just yet, and his voice dropped even quieter. "And if you are worried about what sort of person you are, or were... I wouldn't have even been able to answer that until very recently." He saw her eyes were wide and reflecting the numerous tiny lights around the room when he looked up. "But I know now, and I can say that you're the same as you always were, and probably always will be no matter what. You're a good person, Freya."

She stared at him with such astonished distress he thought she was surely about to cry, and he was already shying away from looking too closely, wishing to avoid something so private—but her eyes stayed dry, and he began to wonder if she even could cry for something other than the pain of others. As if in determination to not leave her alone after such a sad thought, he steadied his gaze onto hers, willing her to believe his words and hoping he had properly conveyed that she was a remarkable person. After breaking their eye contact with a blink, she slowly looked away, appearing to sink back into her thoughts once more.

He no longer felt the need to rush along their time together, as they lapsed into a quiet staring contest against each other with the cushions of the sofa, remaining like that for some time, until Freya shifting in her seat caused him to look up at the soft noise and movement.

"I guess I could," she started, mumbling so low he almost wasn't sure if she wasn't accidentally giving voice to her stream of consciousness rather than attempting to speak, "talk to Albus and just—try and see what some of the memories—I mean the effect, and..." She was absentmindedly tugging at a lock of hair, but abruptly gripped it in her fist as her eyes snapped up to his with some sudden unperceivable thought. "You know—I don't really know much about you at all," she said in surprise, as if she had just noticed this after spending the whole day with him and watching him unbox presents that she herself had gotten him. His brows raised as if to denote this fact, blinking with languid disbelief, but she went on with a newfound intensity directed towards him. "What sorts of things do you like as presents?"

He stared at her, trying to catch up with the change in pace, and then frowning.

"You don't—need to get me anything _more_ ; this is already..." He tucked his forefinger inside his collar, running along the edge of it and tugging it straight at the end. He just realized it had been keeping him warm this whole time even though the house itself was probably chilly, and darted a guilty look at her—but she was preoccupied in not having gotten the answer she was after.

"Well... But..." She chewed on her lip for a second, her brows furrowed. "I suppose you do already have more coming for your birthday..."

He had almost forgotten, and held his eyes closed at the thought, wondering what other over-the-top meaningful things were left in the world to get him. He was quite happy with just robes—or nothing, as she didn't owe him anything and he was uncomfortable enough with receiving things.

She had turned away from him and was twisting her lock of hair into knots around her finger, staring off into the distance, and he thought he could just see the cogs spinning in her head, almost making his mouth pull into a wry grin despite himself.

Her initial exclamation stuck with him, and he turned he thought of her similarly not knowing much about him over in his mind. It wasn't true at all—she had an entire half of a diary about him—and probably more, in fact, as she had been at least an observer of him for longer than when they had first been properly introduced. There were, however, plenty of things she had never known... such as the very nature of the house they were currently sitting in.

The idea bounced around his brain in slow motion as he deliberated on the pros and cons.

A good outcome might be that she would be so satisfied with knowing more personal facts about him that she might not feel the need to get close by acquiring him any more presents—but it could also be further fuel to get him something even more sentimental, which was certainly a con in his books, as he didn't want anyone spending unnecessary amounts of time and money getting him things. Still... he felt as if he owed it to her, in a way.

In a final justification, he resolved that today was Freya's Christmas to get whatever he could give her, and if what she wanted was to know more about him, then he would gladly oblige. Or, at the very least, oblige, but with more reluctance and more grimaces.

"I... told you this was my mother's house, correct?"

Pulled from the depths of her thoughts, she looked round at him in startled confusion, taking a second to catch up.

"Er, no? Oh—well, you said it was your parents' house, yes."

"Right..." He glanced to the books on the shelves rather than at her, carefully deciding which paths to go down and which to avoid at all costs. "Well... more recently... it belonged to her. She handed it over to me during this past summer." He looked back to see how Freya was following with this, finding her brows were raised, but she otherwise showed only rapt interest.

"Why'd she do that?"

He smoothly dodged around a few choice things he could answer, and instead went with, "She moved back home. To live with her family... the Princes."

Freya immediately broke out into a pleasantly surprised grin. "Oh, _she's_ the prince then?"

"Don't... say it like that."

"Alright, noted."

"But... yes. She's... the magical side of the family."

He waited, watching Freya's curious gaze until it gradually sparked in understanding and her mouth popped open.

" _Oh_ —your dad's a muggle!" she exclaimed, pointing at him as if she had discovered this all herself. He gave a stiff half-nod, and she immediately launched further on. "Wow! What's that like? What is _he_ like? Is he scared of dogs?"

"He's" —his mouth threatened to twist away from the mild expression he had plastered on— "definitely a muggle."

"Wow," she breathed again, as this confirmed anything new at all, gazing at him with her eyes fully shining. "That's so cool! I always thought it was amazing how you lot," she waved her hand around in a complex figure eight, which he scrutinized with no understanding, "just get born at random, or marry regardless of magic and all that. It's all rather fantastic."

It was only with considerable effort that he kept his lip from curling in disgust, though much of the reason his face threatened to pull in several directions was due to the fact that she was so out of touch with wizarding society. He supposed she didn't have a reason to be bothered with blood purity—though his brain suddenly thought of why she would be amazed by inter-magical being relations—and skipped much too quickly for him down several frightening paths of thought, each more difficult to process than the last—until he was grasping at literally anything else to say to pull him back into conversation.

"Er—would you... like some more hot cocoa?"

Once they were both sat back down on the couch and had become increasingly warm (he was glad he had thought of something to hopefully help with how cold she must be sitting in the drafty house), his attention was drawn over as she had to quickly pull her mug away from her face to cover a sudden yawn.

"Tired?" he asked with a note of playful sarcasm to his voice. "But we managed to finish the movie before the New Year."

Her long yawn ended in a little laugh. "Still must be pretty late. But I think I'm just tired from... you know." She gestured at him and he frowned, wondering if she would really be referring so nonchalantly to her death yet again, or if there was some other reason he hadn't picked up on. She confirmed his thoughts, though, as she went on. "I suppose it's just going to be like that for a bit; probably until I get my magic back, I would imagine."

"Would you... like to go rest up then?"

It was the first indication that perhaps they should be getting back, and she seemed to have noticed it as well, glancing over at him with a guilty look.

"Err, if you want to," she said, indicating with a nod that it was up to him and making him narrow his eyes.

"You're the one who's tired."

"Am not," she rebutted.

He quietly bit his lip, feeling like he had heard her say these words in the exact same way somewhere else before.

They both awkwardly darted their eyes around the room. He was busy trying to determine if staying around her alone well into the night was on par with drinking with her as far as bad choices went, when she piped up.

"We could," she nodded towards the TV, looking to him with apprehension, "watch another movie...?"

He mulled it over, watching her face, trying to determine if it was her that wanted to stay here, or he who wanted that to be what he was seeing there. She stretched a hopeful smile at him, and he had his answer sorted out for him, though it still stuck somewhere in his gut for a moment before he could nod and say his agreeance.

After a moment of heated discussion about what to watch next from the collection they had brought from her office (he had been apprehensive that she might shoot down watching his first pick, and in the end, they had brought all of them), he was backing away from the TV once more as the contraption whirred in reception to this new movie. But when he turned to take back his seat, he paused where he stood.

Freya had scooted herself over towards the middle of the couch, and when he had first turned around, her eyes had gone straight to his—and then darted all the way in the opposite direction so she was staring at a bookshelf on her other side. Without a clue what to do with this, he stayed frozen in place until he saw to his much greater astonishment her hand flip over, palm up, and lay on the couch beside her.

As if it was the only thing he could reasonably do in this situation, he immediately sat down and slapped the remote control into her hand with carefully gentle force. She whipped her head around and stared down at it in disgust—and then up at him in further disgruntlement, looking rather familiar to him—only this time he was fighting to keep his sly grin looking only sly and not entirely too pleased with himself, or like he might Apparate from the room in abrupt desolation if she so much as squinted at him.

Without a word, she reached straight over his person and smacked the remote back into place onto his armrest, giving him a tight smile as she did—and then she grabbed his hand and deliberately placed it over her own shoulders, letting go almost as quickly as if letting his arm fall where it may.

It took several strong beats of his heart before he found his body was working once more and his eyes removed themselves from where they were fixed onto the TV, looking instead to the remote, though mostly to have a bit more privacy with his face. It still took him an extra full check-up of his vocal cords to see if they were going to betray him before he finally spoke.

"You know, I don't believe this is a scary movie," he said in a voice that he hadn't meant to be so low, but seemed to have found its place by necessity of who he was speaking to being suddenly so close. She, too, took a moment to reply.

"I'm not scared," she said matter-of-factly, "I'm cold."

And at that, he adjusted his arm ever so slightly, and dared even to position himself just an inch closer to her, rationalizing that his robes could do a better job at keeping her warm this way and marveling that this is what it felt like to have extra heat to share with someone.

Midway through their movie, which he was hardly paying any attention to except to keep up with things enough to participate in conversation with her when she commented on things, her commenting gradually began to become more and more spaced out. It was a shame, because he had been quite enjoying the feeling of her shoulders bouncing with laughter, even when it was just a silent passing chuckle that he had never noticed before made such a movement through her, and the sound of her voice, so close that it felt tangible through his body, like when she had spoken to him on a different couch with his ear pressed to it and her low sleepy voice. Her tone had taken a similar downward note on her last remarks about the movie.

Now, however, there was only the canned sound from the TV, which grew even quieter as he lowered the volume, peering down to his side.

He could only really see the top of her head and a downward sliver of her face, but he couldn't imagine she had consciously put her head on his shoulder just now. Mostly due to the fact that he thought it was still a bit out of her familiarity with him, even given this, but also because he had felt her slowly falling towards him and despite that she hadn't spoken in several minutes, her mouth had definitely been moving plenty with frequent yawns.

She didn't stir as he pressed the pause button, and the room was abruptly blanketed in the closed-in padded feeling that it usually held. The golden glow from the lights was still keeping up the atmosphere of coziness though, and besides, no negative aspect could have reached anywhere near him at the moment; not through the enchantments of his cloak, nor through the warmth that radiated in him even despite his garments' magic.

It was odd to him that she could be so warm by his side even without her magic. Though, perhaps not that odd.

He knew he should have been piecing together what to do in this scenario, or panicking that Dumbledore might be penning not only a letter of resignation for him, but some other forged letter in preparation of killing him and covering up the evidence—but these were matters that seemed to be for an entirely different world. His current world only consisted of warmth both in tone of color and in feeling.

The last remaining part of him to be responsible did at least perform a regulatory check on the time—and saw that it was well past midnight. He had made it all of Christmas Eve, giving her hopefully everything he could have offered.

Almost everything. He hadn't gotten a chance to wish her a proper day-of 'merry Christmas.' A shame, really, as they had done such a good job deviously staying up till midnight.

His eyes cast back down, gazing at the slow rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his arm. His conscious was beginning to start back up, and he was feeling more and more like he should say something before she woke up and accused him of taking advantage of her drowsiness to... Well, he wasn't really doing anything, but it still felt like he was getting an awful lot more than he should be. He could only be so greedy with what had already been a very hesitant change-of-heart in her decision for closeness, one which he still did not fully understand but had been trying not to question just yet.

But still... He really did not want to wake her. And he did very much have something that he wished to tell her.

Drawing in a decisive breath, though careful not to move his body too much and disturb her, he let it out in a quiet sigh—and then held his lungs entirely still.

With cautious discretion, he gradually bowed his head down and to the side, as if his neck might creak like a loose floorboard if he went too fast. He hovered with his lips barely an inch from her hair, but his shallow quiet breathing was keeping him on a limit, his heart steadily beating out his time, so that he finally murmured before he could stop himself:

"Happy Christmas, Freya."

And he delicately placed a kiss on the top of her head—then immediately withdrew his face and bit his lip.

The sound of his own voice had been enough to trigger the anxious guilt in him, thinking he might wake her despite it having been so low. It wasn't this that had made him pull away so quickly, though; but that he had felt the warmth of her silky hair and felt like he was stealing something just by touching it. He sincerely hoped that—

"Happy Christmas, Severus."

He blinked.

The room was so silent, he thought he could hear the wind blow through the alleys, streets away. However, his suddenly hammering heartbeat was disturbing his attempts to listen that far, as he stared straight across the room, not seeing much of anything but a blur.

It was almost as if he had imagined it; as if the sound had come from his own mind, slipping into the sleepy depths of the night. Except that he had almost felt the words spoken into his shoulder from one whose lips were so close to it.

She hadn't stirred; hadn't moved an inch, he was sure. But then, he had been sure of her slumber as well, and he hadn't been so correct about that as it turned out.

As his lungs slowly began to remember how to breathe properly, he blinked several more times, feeling as if he might suddenly startle awake at any moment.

Except, he didn't; and the weight on his shoulder remained, warm and comforting.

He was glad there was no little window in front of him then; no mirror or otherwise reflective surface; and glad, too, that surely Freya could not see his face any more than he could see hers—because he could not have stopped himself from grinning if he tried.

Gently, he adjusted his arm to pull himself just slightly closer to her, silently thankful that there was no fireplace here, as she was the only fire that he wished to sit beside and he was more than happy to get the chance to return this warmth back to her.

* * *

_—***—_


	10. Ink

_—***—_

* * *

The new year brought with it a return to normalcy as opposed to anything particularly drastic.

Although, Severus had for the first time in quite a long time visited his relatives after having received permission to follow through with his original holiday leave request; a seemingly random feat, but one which he attributed entirely to whatever Freya had said to Dumbledore behind closed doors and would not take credit for in person. It had been an almost boringly nostalgic trip containing a ceaseless undercurrent of irritation for family members—which he had much appreciated, as it had felt comfortingly commonplace after an overly eventful year. Plus, it had given him five days' time to contemplate everything during the dull droning.

His return just before the start of the new term had certainly left the holiday feeling expediated, jostling him abruptly back into the buzzing fray that he had been running from at the beginning—but he needn't have worried himself so much. His relatives, not being big fans of the Daily Prophet, had not received the copy printed just before New Year's Eve containing a tiny correction to a previous issue and an interview with a certain retired Hogwarts Potions master, counseling that Albus Dumbledore's run of the school was not to be so carelessly defamed and that the Prophet should get its facts straight before sending them to ink. Apparently the headmaster had been rather busy himself over holiday trying to orchestrate this interview—and at quite an opportune time, as right when everyone would be stuffed with a week's worth of holiday meals, presents, and cheer, so wrapped up in their own goings-on that there just wasn't any room to be caring much at all what they had read in the paper weeks ago and might be factually contested.

There were still other ways for people to hold their suspicions though of course, such as forgoing presented evidence and listening to their gut; squinting at the teacher who had still very indisputably in their memories snappishly assigned them long essays both before and after the holiday, or side-eyeing the colleague who at staff meetings always sat in the back of the room looking to be silently cursing their beloved headmaster. Lucky, then, that there existed another besides Dumbledore who was not just looking out for their own skin with newsprint corrections, but trying to defend specifically his—though Severus would have preferred it if Freya hadn't shouted quite so loud at the snooty sixth-years who had whispered as they walked by, causing the whole hall to have turned to stare and him to have had to carefully coax her away before she could flex her more colorful language on them, having to explain to her that teachers aren't really supposed to be doing that, no matter how much she thought that they were chicken-brained for still thinking he was an evil lunatic. Or, at the very least, it wasn't advisable to do it without some filtering of words.

Apart from his own precarious social placement, Freya herself had seemed to have taken a particular turn upon his arrival back to the castle, though one which had almost achieved going in the same vein of normalcy that he had been enjoying—almost.

She had indeed welcomed him back much the same as she had on Christmas Eve, only in place of the burst of joy when uttering his name, there was a quiet, stand-offish politeness and a false smile that he had sorely wished would have stayed burned away with her memories. This time, even as his eyes had been searching hers, she had looked to have been searching back; inscrutable and piercing. Besides this difference, he hadn't been sure that she had even realized the change in herself, so indiscernible to read as it was, though she had willingly confessed to having had regular meetings with Dumbledore during the days he had been away. It seemed it was a slow-going process that had only left her feeling exhausted and confused, not the put-back-together and enlightened Freya either of them might have been imagining. She had indeed looked so dazed at times in their conversation that he had resolved not to bother her with questions on the subject and to take a 'wait and see' approach to her in general.

Despite this, she had somehow only seemed to be getting closer with him during the first week of the new term.

She was still having plenty of difficulty with names ( _"Appleson is the Gryffindor creep, right?_ "), and her habits had changed a bit, but it seemed her overall demeanor had shifted ever so slightly back a month so that the pair of them were on a much more familiar, even friendly, schedule. For the first time, he had a partner to avoid the Great Hall with—and, for nearly the first time, he wasn't avoiding it because of her. She hadn't yet been ready to face the crowds and he hadn't yet wanted to face sitting next to McGonagall (or anyone else), and so they had taken to eating meals in her quarters—with a little bit of re-working as to how they acquired said meals. Freya's magic had returned and she had leapt at the first opportunity to fetch him something, Apparating a dish up from the kitchens not once, but twice, on their first evening together. Though the 'twice' was due to the fact that she had first popped back in front of him with a great display of emptying an entire bowl of stew onto the floor, not realizing that Apparating with liquid would be a challenging task, and then having to return with a securely fastened serving lid over the tray the second time.

So it went that the biggest change was that he was spending more time than he ever previously would have imagined in Freya's cozy little sitting area in front of her fire, even more so than the dungeons or the library. He still had practical things to prepare for classes some nights, and they still visited the research library if he prompted, but she mostly invited him straight into spending time with her—while grading papers, of course, which he suspected was at least part of her intention given all the questions she had for him during these times. However, it wasn't that he was particularly opposed to this arrangement. It had actually given his stomach just the smallest bit of a pleasing flip to see her shyly look up at him and ask in a joking manner for help with her schoolwork. Nor was he particularly opposed to her helpful accommodations for him to take his meals in peace, or her being defensive for him while he was still struggling to readjust to the whole school thinking he was some walking gossip item (though he mostly put up with this because her colorful language was an amusing pay-off for embarrassing him in public). But what he could have done without returning quite so back to normal was what she had gotten into lately.

His birthday this year fell directly midweek, which meant that there was surely no time for pause to even entertain the idea of acknowledging or doing anything for it—thankfully, as he would have preferred. Most unfortunately, however, Freya was still very aware of what day it was, and she had found it particularly rejuvenating to participate in mischief centered around him, taunting him all week that she had 'big, big plans.'

These worrying plans had included specific instructions for him to wait an hour after classes before coming to visit her quarters this very evening of January 9th, and that the office doors would be unlocked so that he could let himself in rather than knock as he always did.

As he pushed open the first door, which slowly swung open as promised, Severus was greatly wishing she had just unleashed all of her terrariums and was going to make him collect everything again as a fun game rather than whatever else she could have planned. A simple rounding up of Dark creatures would have been a preferred fate than what he was fearing most—a party. Or, more directly, just any other human being that he would have to interact with in a celebratory way. He wasn't quite sure how far she had read into her diaries, but he wished he had made her sign a clause long ago that the ' _no parties_ ' rule would most certainly extend to ones thrown by her as well.

After passing through her silent office, finding all its creatures safely in their respective homes but still listening hard for any sounds through the second door, he grimaced as he pushed this open too and made his way into the now familiar chamber... where he stopped just beyond the archway.

"...Surprise."

Freya's head, which had been propped up by her elbow, jerked up from where she had been nodding off at the desk. She blinked sleepily around, stretching out an arm and stifling a yawn, until her eyes found him standing there and her expression changed to one of shock. In a fluid motion, her outstretched arm quickly switched to a grand gesture instead as she bounced to her feat.

"Surprise!" she called back, her warm voice echoing up to the ceiling in the pointedly deserted room.

He blinked at her with his mouth in a tight smile.

She had been dropping hints all day; how her hand was cramped from writing so many invitations, that she wasn't sure if she had prepared enough food for more than ten people. Now he found her sat where she always was: on her couch in front of the coffee table, its legs transfigured higher for when they used it as a writing desk, as it looked like she had been doing before succumbing to one of her recent bouts of tiredness. Very notably alone. The desk did contain a small pile of presents, but other than this and the fact that she hadn't taken down her lights from Christmas (actually, she had increased them, copying his own rendition so that this and her room candles were the only light with the windows darkened by evening) there were no signs of any such dangerously warned-of party.

Yes, apart from the fact that the armchair he usually sat in across from her was now a grand throne complete with lavish decorative gilding and party streamers, which she now bowed dramatically low in gesture to, the room was much the same as it always was.

"A party befitting of a _prince_ with your particular tastes, your highness."

"I... hate you," he delivered with simple elegance.

"You're _very_ welcome," she enthused with a wolfish grin, flipping her long hair as she straightened up and no longer showing a trace of drowsiness as she delighted in her moment of fruition. "The surprise is that obviously I'm not going to torture you with a social gathering."

"And what do you call what you were doing to me all day then?" he asked with a roll of his eyes, trying to look as annoyed as he should be and walking over to take his newly appointed seat. He paused before it in extreme distaste before slowly sitting, as if the over-embellishments might bite.

"Oh, that—that's just the daily routine, of course."

"Of course."

"Wait!" She sat back down and suddenly put out her hands across the table to stop him as he went to set his bag down on it. "Don't take anything out yet! This isn't work time, this is presents time."

"And will there be dinnertime somewhere on the schedule?"

She scrunched her face, thinking, and then grabbed one present in particular, sliding it over to him with a bright smile. He stared at the wrapped-up very obviously bottle-shaped package.

"I wonder if that could perhaps be a three-course meal," he said with sarcasm, already eyeing the tag that was tied around the neck spelling out his name in large flashy golden letters and wondering if she had written a note explaining that she had wrapped it just to tease him when he would already know exactly what it was.

"We'll never know unless you open it," she said, nudging the bottle and the rest of the gifts towards him encouragingly. "Come on, it's your birthday! Just enjoy it."

Holding in a sigh, he reluctantly sat forward in his seat to tuck in to a meal of gifts.

Shockingly enough, the bottle of wine was, as the label professed when he uncovered it, Blackthorn. The inside of the tag contained a quick note with an apology for having to wrap this one, because she _obviously_ had not wanted to spoil this _huge_ _surprise_ for him, which he let Freya read after he was finished to sate her curiosity for her own unremembered handwriting. He carefully set the bottle to the side as if it was a caustic poison, internally vowing never to so much as have a single sip if he was planning on being anywhere near her.

The second gift made him frown, as it too was wrapped despite the third and final present definitely not following suit and this not lining up with what the tag on the wine had said. Current Freya raised her eyebrows at his reaction to the small parcel as he turned it over in his hands.

"Something the matter?"

He shrugged. "It's wrapped..."

"Should it... not be?"

He had been avoiding looking too directly at her as it was uncomfortable enough receiving presents without having to worry about his every reaction being watched as if by a hawk, but he now peered across the table. She had leaned forward when he had moved on to this gift, and he studied the way she was trying to correct this reaction, casually tucking her hair behind her ear and blinking at him innocently.

He narrowed his eyes and went back to the tiny package with piqued interest, taking his wand out at once to unwrap it. Her reaction of disappointment that he disappeared the paper rather than noisily tear into it was very familiar, but only got the tiniest bit of a smile from him as it merely served to pin down that she didn't remember their old gag—but it did seem to prove something else, which he was further moved to certainty of when he removed the carefully contained knife from its holding place within a small wooden box.

" _No way!_ " Freya said with a gasp, her eyes wide as she leaned in. "That's... _Do you know what that is?_ Why, it's the knife of legend; the fabled phoenix fire-forged blade, created at the peak of a volcano about to—oh, alright, it's just a knife," she concluded with a much blunter end to her excited story as his languid stare finally put too much of a damper on her fun. "You could have at least pretended to be impressed."

"Sorry," he said without sincerity, eyeing back and forth between her and the knife. She was biting her lip and still trying not to look too invested, but he had already figured her out. He didn't need to call her on this directly, though.

His attention turned back to his present, which, after inspecting a small piece of parchment containing only manufacturer's drawn instructions, he held aloft and placed his thumb on the little hidden wheel on the handle and released a latch at the bottom with his other hand. Clicking the wheel sent the knife blade flying through several quick transformations; everything from a tiny needle-point skewer, to several paring knives, to a set of chopping blades in various different metals, and, finally, to an overly large serrated knife that looked like it could have carved perhaps a small Thanksgiving dragon. He turned the wheel back to a regular silver carving knife, fit more for everyday use—perhaps on an apple—and then placed it back into its wooden box.

He got the feeling by the secretively sly look on her face that he wasn't the only one who had figured something out, wondering if he shouldn't have at some point told the kitchen elves not to repeat what he had asked for on Christmas eve and what state it bad been in when they had given it to him.

"Thank... you," he said with difficulty, not looking at her and hoping that she would repay him the courtesy of not mentioning things out loud. It was uncomfortably nice that he had earned a present from her current self as well as her previous incarnation, but he didn't want to make a fuss over it, or be fussed over.

He quickly moved on to his third and final present, glad that he recognized this one as an advanced planned plain box.

But it turned out to be the most confounding of them all, and one which might end up getting even less use than the wine.

"A book?" Freya frowned in mirror of his expression, apparently always quick to judge her own gifts.

"Not a book," he said slowly, not looking up from the inside cover he had flipped open, "it's..." He was too busy reading and re-reading the short note that was contained within to finish his sentence, but Freya seemed to pick up on things herself.

"Oh," she said with even deeper confusion, tilting her head now. "But... I take it you're not the diary keeping type?"

He glanced up at her finally, delivering his answer with a single raised eyebrow.

"Well," she said with a sigh, leaning back on the couch, "I suppose four out of five isn't a bad record. Maybe I'll find something nice for whatever holiday you lot celebrate next."

"Yes," he nodded back absently, the worry for whatever he had in store for the future not setting in as he gazed back down at the empty journal in his hands, still open to the note pressed between the cover and first page.

" _Something to keep you from looking so upset every time I leave the castle. Use the one I gave you when you write." — Freya_

He wondered why she had written her name after every single note if she had been planning to give them to him all at once in person herself.

More importantly, how she had ever thought that he would make use of a diary to let out his frustrations was beyond him. Her abrupt and unexplained disappearances had been annoying, but writing about them wouldn't solve the reason why.

He shut the book and ran his fingers over the embossing of a feather pressed into the soft leather cover, and then stowed the whole thing into a pocket of his robes where it fit surprisingly snug.

"So... Well—was it alright for a birthday, then?"

Freya's expression when he looked back up made whatever clever reply he had been about to come up with—which definitely would have included that he could have done without the throne—wither before he could open his mouth. Her eyes diverted away to the fire, interrupting his view of the sincerity he had seen there, and she went on.

"It's just... you did such a good job on Christmas... I'm sorry if I didn't deliver as well on the 'no party' party—celebration—affair."

"It's fine," he replied with quiet surprise at her genuine search for approval.

"'Fine' in a good way, or a bad way?"

His expression relaxed and he blinked slowly at her. "It's nice."

She looked even more unsure, peering over every inch of his face with narrowed eyes, but eventually relented as the corners of his mouth threatened to curl upwards. She smiled in a self-conscious way and for the first time since he had entered the room looked down to her own papers spread about the desk.

"Then... you just want to get to work?" He nodded once, already going for his bag. "You don't want to... go on any wild adventures? Or have any cake? Or pop into a pub and get a drink? Or—well, we have wine right here—"

" _No_."

Her hand froze mid-air before touching the bottle and he tried to smooth over his too-loud response with a placating look.

"Freya... this is fine."

She lowered her hand and, after a last comical pout, turned her eyes back down.

"It's really not fair," she mumbled at her papers, adjusting her position in her seat to follow his example back to work, "you get to act all princely, but I don't get to do anything exciting to treat you like a prince right back..."

Though his head was still tilted down to the desk as hers was, his eyes stayed up, watching as she deftly combed her hair back with her fingers into a more studious style that would keep it away from her face while she worked. His gaze found neutral space between them on the desk so that he could watch more covertly as each long strand disappeared until she had bundled it all up into a braid and smoothed it over her shoulder.

He so wished she wouldn't do that. It rather defeated the purpose of him putting forth all the effort to treat her to a nice holiday if it only made her want to one-up him. However much she was enjoying teasing him about his mother's maiden name, he was certainly no prince. The very reason that he had been trying to be nice to her in the first place was evidence enough of that. But the way that she had genuinely thanked him after Christmas and had since been jumping at the chance to be nice to him didn't fully portray that her teasing about his name was just that.

He momentarily remembered over two weeks back now when he had dropped her off at this very office door, well past midnight, and she smiled up at him and thanked him for a wonderful Christmas. Her cheeks hadn't rounded out in that way they did when she normally smiled wide, however, and he had been too busy staring at her eyes catching the moonlight, conveying her gratitude there instead, to have noticed much else anyway.

He didn't want her thanks, though. Those eyes only made him want to swiftly heel-turn and raise his chin, as if to snub the very golden color itself as far too rich for his tastes.

It had taken him three whole days just to convince her that he didn't want a cake, with his first attempt failing after she had not been entirely put off by the complicated recipe that he had stated was his favorite (she was determined to make it herself, so he had just picked something difficult), and the other two days had been spent convincing her he just didn't like cake at all, which she had taken about as well as if he had been trying to convince her he wasn't fond of the stars in the sky, sunlight, or breathing. After she had threatened to issue a formal summons to inspect his soul for some malfunction, he had snapped and declared his only wish was for a complete ban on all confections.

The distinct lack of cake as he glanced absently around the desk spoke that she had at least listened to this request. Still, if things were to get back to normal—and to be sure his definition of 'normal' was very skewed, for he certainly didn't mean for any forgiveness to be taking place—he needed for them to be even. If he was tallying up apples to cakes, movies to enchanted robes, accidental murder to making his life a brighter more bearable experience every time he got to see her smile... Well, he might as well stop counting, as it all seemed quite settled from his perspective.

However, so long as they found some semblance of an equilibrium, he could feel content to be upholding his New Year's resolution.

For now, he gathered his focus to finally settle into the grading that he was meant to be doing.

Most unusually for him, focus is what he was finding it hardest to regain since the tumultuous holiday, and the poorly-worded essays on the importance of different viscosities of water for potion-making were not holding his attention against all the other dozen or so thoughts swirling in his head. He had almost been more out of it lately than Freya, though not quite on her level of exhaustion, where she often kept her fingers pressed to her temples, holding up her head as she worked—as she did now. They must have made it all of twenty minutes before both of them looked to be ready to start using shortcuts rather than reading every word their students had jammed in to fill the length requirements. Freya had already demonstrated earlier in the week that she had re-learned the highlighting spell Flitwick had recommended and he had taught her, which had prompted him to have asked where she had picked that up and to which she hadn't had an answer beyond that it might have been somewhere in her fifteenth pile of notes.

When he saw that she was sitting with both hands on the sides of her perplexed face, he knew things were particularly bad—both because it looked to be an incident where he might need offer his assistance, and because he was paying much more attention to her eyes roaming over the page than his own work.

"Need any help?"

She slowly looked up at his question, her eyes blinking in deep confusion, before shaking her head in disbelief.

"I... really don't think this is something you can help with."

Now he was puzzled, and after conveying as much with a highly raised brow, she demonstrated what she meant by sitting up and raising the scroll of parchment from the desk, which fell all the way down to it even though she held it high enough that her face was hidden behind the middle.

" _Ahem_. '...but my uncle, who just got re-married to a hag, showed up to Christmas dinner too, which made Auntie Penny (she's the one who's part-veela) very upset, and my mum had to step in before the ham to break them both up, which was when I got to meet my second cousin, who, turns out, got bit by a werewolf only just this past summer. We went out back and played ball while dad got Uncle Eric down from the roof.'"

She dropped the scroll back to the desk, revealing her bewildered and defeated expression.

"All I asked... was how their holiday went."

He nodded very slowly, biting back his grin with effort. "And did you, perhaps, ask them to relate it to the class theme...?"

She blinked once at him with a deadly stare. "Alright, so you might be right about essay topics, but I am _never_ taking your advice on length again." She shook out the scroll roughly to straighten it. "What is it with kids...?"

"I for one am very interested to hear if he fed his second cousin any scraps under the table." She shot him a disparaging look and he relented to a more serious comment. "First year?"

"Oh, what gave it away? The prattle or the punctuation?"

"The outlandish claims about relatives being various different beings. It happens a lot with children believing anything an adult says in jest and being too stupid to correctly identify for themselves."

"Harsh," she said with a cool grin, "coming from someone who was eleven only as many years ago."

He refrained from pointing out that his now twenty-two-year-old self was the one who had been helping her out lately, returning only a curt smile.

She leaned forward in her seat with sudden sparkling interest, abandoning the scroll off to the side. "And what were _your_ essays like at that age, then? I'll bet your teachers were reading them with the same expression."

His lips pursed, lacking ground to defend himself from this notion as he was more than certain he had caused his teachers—especially those still working here—to give his papers plenty of looks.

"Not because my essays were idiotic," he said with mild defensiveness, "just because they were usually... longer. And I may have... questioned a few points."

She slowly raised her brows. "Do you perhaps mean ' _argued_ a few points'?"

The corners of his lips began to curl upward. "...Perhaps."

"Little know-it-all Sev," she laughed, "now that's a funny addition to the actual picture."

At this mention, his eyes snapped downward and he reflexively reset his quill to paper, pretending to mark something off. He still was not at all happy she had seen them, but thankfully she made no more comments about his childhood photos. Less thankfully, she hadn't strayed from the topic.

"So, if you were always that controversial," she went on, making him narrow his eyes at her word choice, as it sounded to him a lot like 'unpopular' but in a nicer way, "were things different back when you were a student like the rest? You can't tell them off now, but back then would you have 'argued' their ear off if they spoke to you rudely?"

He upheld his silent glare for a moment before answering. He understood where her curiosity was stemming from; she had already commented plenty in recent days that he was far too lenient on students who disrespected him and questioned at every opportunity why he put up with it, seemingly unable to conflate his sour demeanor with how often he dragged her away from doing his reprimanding for him. He wanted to mention that he had only been letting them off easy in the hallways, within sight of other staff members, and that his class time was his domain to enact retribution, but it didn't quite seem like something he should be confessing to when he was trying to set the example of proper scholarly conduct for her. All this aside, her approach to pry open his childhood for the reasoning to his actions wasn't very welcome, mostly because it meant he had to begrudgingly recall every less-than-ideal day of it.

"Well," he said finally, "I never literally took anyone's ear off, if that answers your question."

She gave a soft amused scoff at this, nodding as if that did indeed settle things in her mind. "Right, I thought so. Things must have been very different then, otherwise I would have quite the memory somewhere of having had to glue some poor student back together," she said without concern, already redirecting back to her work.

However, his own attention stayed on her. "What do you mean you 'thought so'?"

"Oh, well, I just heard some rumor about..." Her eyes searched the room in her pause even as his widened. "...Some things—just students gossiping. But I doubt any of its true, right?"

His gut twisted in bitter realization that what had preceded the holidays had not been so neatly boxed up and shoved into the back of some vanishing closet. He mentally cursed her for bringing this up, and then himself for not thinking to immediately taboo the whole topic so that it would not have ever gotten back to her in the first place. Even though he tried to dissolve the mortifying effect of less than idyllic schoolyard memories and instead muster the grace of his age, his muttered response still came off just a touch acidic.

"What do you think?"

This perhaps was not the best response, as he had forgotten Freya's penchant to literally try to answer his dismissive rhetorical questions and now had to endure her sizing him up. Her lilted laughter at the end of her surveying did nothing to help his darkening mood.

"No way," she said with a decisive shake of her head, "couldn't be. I can't imagine anyone picking more than one fight with you and finding out quick you're not easy to mess with."

He stared back at her easy-going grin, making her look merely confident that such a thing would be no more than a playful experience for him, his expectations of ridicule thoroughly melted and leaving his mouth rather useless for words. Instead, he mentally vowed to defend to the grave whatever this image she had of him was, already working up a mild panic that there was plenty of evidence to the contrary contained within files and heads throughout the school. Sneaking out one night to completely wipe the entire castle clean, put a hex on the topic, and take out anyone who knew the truth one by one was seeming like a tempting plan of action.

"Well, at least," she continued with a thoughtful frown, "I know it didn't go so well for me when I tried it."

He guiltily put a nix on even his facetious thoughts of offing anyone, but still thought it would be a profound relief when the students who had gone to school at the same time as him finally all graduated.

"So then, were you not a Death Eater when you were in school?"

"Wh— _What?_ " His hesitant feelings of repairing pride abruptly came to a jerking halt. Her eyes widened in innocent surprise, and he had to remind himself that she was still going through her phase of asking nonstop questions to get his jaw to close, but even so, she could do with perhaps recollecting her memories of tactfulness. "Of course I wasn't. You think they would let an underage wizard join their ranks?"

"I think they'd do that and be down at the local pound recruiting rabid dogs as well, to be honest," she said with a raised brow. "They didn't exactly seem like the choosy sort—well, apart from the..." She made a face as she reached for the words, looking away as she finished with "... _other stuff_ " and then quickly moved on. "So then—you didn't get your Mark until after graduating?"

Still not recovered from the first surprise, this next one only added an extra crease to his brow, as he realized that her brightly curious eyes had been going—as they did now—to his left arm for the past couple minutes. So, that's what she had been interested about.

"Been reading up on the finer details of the war, have you?" he asked as his expression settled back down to a moody glower, his voice lowering to match it. She gave only a casual shrug in response.

"I might've been... I don't seem to have any memory of what one of those actually looks like, though."

Her gaze held onto his, conveying her meaning without voicing the request and waiting patiently, presumably to see if he would steer away or continue.

"And you do realize," his voice growing more serious, trying to break through her forced nonchalance, as the only way he would be entertaining this discussion is if she behaved, "that it doesn't exactly... look the same?"

"That's what makes it a fascinating bit of magic though, isn't it?"

_If by 'fascinating' you mean 'grotesquely horrifying to have on my own body_ ,' he thought.

He wasn't completely opposed to her idea enough to voice his misgivings, although he did have plenty of them, and for a hard moment he only stared at the left sleeve of his robe. To deny that he understood having a fascination for the Dark Arts would be quite the absurd joke, and it was after all her current profession, but he was sure she was interested beyond just that and it was more so this thought that gave him considerable pause. He was already carrying regrets about sharing so much of his personal life with her, and it had just been tiny tidbits. Not to mention what he had decided over New Year's...

Still. There was no real reason to deny her interest in just a look, and in some absurd way he wanted her to see. As if flippantly playing into her mellow attitude could bury down his own uneasiness.

With his fingers at the cuff of his sleeve, slowly pulling it back, he vividly remembered the night on which he had done this very motion for Dumbledore; in the room of a Hogsmeade inn, both of them staring down in mute shock at what used to be a horrible red and sometimes inky black image burned by magic into his very flesh, and his sweat had run as cold as it had on the day that he had been given it to see that only a mere shiny raised scar was left.

Both memories still made him vaguely queasy, and he kept his eyes fixed in a haze on the desk as he tugged the fabric up to his elbow, even as Freya leaned in.

"No touching," he warned as her hands had reached out, making them pause midair at his voice. Her calm eyes were much closer as she leveled her gaze with his, seemingly all business now.

"May I touch... around it? And may I see your other hand as well?"

He blinked with extreme apprehension at these requests, but relented to her sincere expression. He did sigh and set his face to look rather harassed at having to lean in more over the table, feeling like he was getting ready for an arm-wrestling match with her—and nearly did. Apparently by 'touch' she had meant to feel up his entire forearm, as her hands traced over every inch, including, strangely, his right as well. He watched with greatly mounting worry, and a healthy increase of annoyance, as it became harder to not twitch at her gentle but unrelenting touch, as she went from feeling all around the ugly scar, to squeezing both his hands in hers (earning a very deepened frown from him, though she didn't break her concentration), to even checking his pulse at his wrist and crook of his elbow. He felt like some living experiment and suddenly had great sympathy for her secrecy surrounding her own magical embodiments.

"Hm..."

It seemed her final inspection was perhaps more of a contemplative motion, as her fingertip traced as closely as he would let her get without jerking away around the scarred symbol, and he watched her eyes stay fixed in place, brows knit, as every muscle in his left side felt like it was simultaneously going taut and falling relaxed against his will, on a repeat cycle each time the light ticklish sensation went from the sensitive inner skin to the outer sides. At last his hand gave an irrepressible spasm and she snapped out of her thoughts, releasing him. He immediately clutched at his arm, feeling quite confused that for once it wasn't pain that he was massaging out of his tingling skin, and keeping his eyes diverted far to one side of the room.

"That really is..." Freya's words trailed off down the same path as her eyes followed, before snapping back to attention on him. "You know, I think—if you'll let me, that is—I could—"

"No."

She blinked, her mouth still open, as she met his suddenly impassive stare. Her lips slowly closed as she watched him yank his sleeve back down and smooth the warm fabric.

"Oh. Right—of course—I just thought that..." He tried not to outwardly grimace as he waited for her to say what he already knew. She shrugged and finished, "Maybe it could have been like an extra gift if I could do something—"

"Well, you can't."

Her mouth hung open again, and for a moment he thought his tone had been a shade too rude, knowing she wasn't exactly as fond of dealing with his tones lately, but she merely looked away and set her jaw.

"Right," she said with a nod, "I see that now. Obviously my worst gift idea yet, should have just gone with a great pair of socks."

He let the silence take hold as they both stared off in opposite directions, almost wishing that she hadn't returned to normal enough to cow to his rudeness and would fight him on it instead. But, unmistakably, she had; in the very most difficult and trying of ways, just as he had been afraid of right before lifting his sleeve, Freya was back to form to try and push her jarfuls of helpfulness onto him, and he found that he still was not keen on the taste. Part of him felt even more justified to decline her advances on this front now, after knowing just how meddlesome and coddling she had been in the past, keeping him out of the Order for inane reasons—but another more pressing part of him was busy cursing himself for being the first to shift his eyes back towards hers and not liking the sight of her quiet dismay.

Quietly drawing in a great breath, he broke the silence.

"It isn't something to be messed with," he said in a muted voice, attempting to explain without sounding condescending like he was reprimanding a student. "The effects of trying are not very... desirable." The look she gave him then made him sorry for ever thinking she might feel as if he were insulting her intelligence, showing only deep concern to be slighted in a different way.

"I wouldn't have assumed anything less," she assured him. "I never would have proposed anything that could have hurt you, Severus, I just thought... well, that you already were being hurt." She looked away and sank further back into the couch cushions, her fingers nervously going to her mouth so that the first of her next words were slightly obscured. "Looks like it would hurt, anyway... But I suppose I should have known that you're clever enough to be taking care of things on your own, of course. I just can't help myself it seems; wanting to mess with magics that shouldn't be messed with."

He returned the bleak smile she offered towards him with raised brows, suddenly distracted from the topic of his own self.

"Messing with magics such as...?" He had caught her pluralization, and now caught too her sudden look of realization, narrowing his eyes as hers darted away. His mouth pulled into a thin line. "Such as the very foundational magics that make up your entire being—?"

"Ah—hm—I seem to recall also reading that Death Eaters could communicate via those marks; would you care to elaborate on this intriguing—"

"Are you having ill-effects from remembering things?"

The comically ponderous look she had adorned froze, her hand still holding her chin, as her diversion fell apart under his stare. His piercing look gave no remorse, unwilling to let her worm away given that she was always asking invasion questions of him—plus, she was only grimacing in reluctant jest, not appearing to be offended by his cool, knowing smirk as he waited patiently, netting his hands with his elbows on the armrests of the throne, forgetting for a moment to not display himself like a lord of the room.

Her face scrunched up even more, her posture squirming back to face him head-on with her arms folded.

"I... It's just..." She suddenly sat up so far that she was leaning over the desk. "Do I look older to you? Be honest. I swear I look older than I remember, just slightly, but..."

He blinked at her panicked face—and then slowly pursed his lips tightly shut. He certainly wasn't touching that question. She didn't look any older than the day he had first seen her youthful face and had determined that they must be close in years, but he wasn't about to comment on a woman's apparent age, feeling like he had most assuredly at some point been instilled with the notion to avoid this. Even so, the pleading expression on her face—which looked more than perfectly fine—made the corners of his mouth twitch, and he eventually answered her with a question of his own.

"Do you _feel_ older?"

Her brows creased as she thought about this change of perspective for a moment.

"No, not really... I feel more..." He watched her eyes haze over for a split second, but the look was gone before he could even assess it. "Well, what about you—do you feel older with your birthday?"

He shook his head with a quiet scoff... then his placid amusement at the silly idea faded from his face as he remembered everything from the past year and suddenly felt that he had rapidly aged by about five decades. In retrospect, the past four years gave the impression that he had been contained within a bubble, and now with it burst, he was just waking up to find that he was without, and had missed out on, something vital.

"At least," he said, jumping ship from his thoughts, "I haven't started losing my memory and going grey."

He couldn't resist a derisive grin as her hand whipped to her head, patting her hair all over—and then stared daggers at him for his more than apparent lack of concern for her fears. He didn't know what she was worried about though; it sounded more plausible to him that she was just naturally aging and that this wasn't a real negative side effect. There were much more obvious ones that she could have said, such as her tiredness and confusion, or anything else truly honest that she could be hiding and he was sure would have been worthy of genuine sympathy if his theories about what went on following her secretive meetings with Dumbledore were even remotely accurate.

Moreover, on the topic of honesty, she wasn't the only one who had been having such meetings. For just a moment he had been hoping to be about to stumble himself towards headway on a particular task.

However, it was seeming more likely that he would have to purposefully steer things that way if he truly wanted to go there, which he wasn't sure that he did. Though this was as good an opening as any if he was going to attempt to scratch that surface, and it doubled as a dodge away from being the spectacle in this conversation, as she kept trying to make him out to be.

A twinge of guilt hit his stomach as he raised his eyes to hers, but he honed the feeling into a silent apology towards her pouting face, trying to show that he had not fully left her hanging on the subject she had broached, and did have concern for her worries.

"Besides that," he spoke up in a softer tone, "how have you been feeling lately?"

Her immediate reaction to look away wasn't so surprising; he considered it plainly obvious that he wasn't merely asking how she felt about returning to her teaching responsibilities. He kept his eyes trained on hers, willing her to take his interest genuinely and give him a serious answer.

"Um," she shrugged, staring down at her knees, "I dunno... You mean apart from suddenly feeling all dutiful and concerned with this wizarding society business?" He blinked slowly at her, waiting for her evasive smile to subside as her banter went unanswered. There wasn't a time in his memory when she had willingly shared much about herself unless in radical situations, such as when she had been drunk or thinking of him as no more than a stranger, but he knew from these instances that there was plenty to be shared if she would just stop diverting her eyes as if he was pressing her on trial.

Straightening himself to lean back with more authority in his gaudy throne, he debated the drastic tactic of leveraging his birthday if she wouldn't at least give him a " _Not great, thanks_ " soon. She seemed to pick up on the threat behind his steady stare, finally readjusting her hands in her lap and poking her tongue against her cheek before continuing.

"Well... I suppose... I feel as if I've just woken up out of a dead sleep," he watched her shoulders rise stiffly, as if she had been about to try and pass this off as a joke but the delivery had been off, and her tone shifted. "And... it's as if... there's something I'm meant to be doing. Some life-changing thing, but it was ages ago and I've already missed it, so now I've just got this... feeling like I'm missing something really important."

His next breath came in deep and steady, and he felt as if his stare was no longer just for show.

With her brows creased and her eyes out of focus, she twisted the tiny end of her braid—and then took in a sudden breath and looked back up. "Honestly I just wish I could get a good night's sleep at this point," she said with a nervous laugh, "my morning class found me snoring on my desk the other day and I almost snapped at them." She pulled a face and demonstrated with a held-out hand that she meant the magical kind.

"You snore?"

Her expression immediately dropped to a half-lidded glare, her thumb and forefinger staying pressed together before her face, to which he smiled playfully back.

"Yes, thanks so much for listening, Severus," she quipped as she straightened up in her seat, "what a true and honest friend you are."

"The pleasure is all mine," he insisted silkily.

She made a sour face at him and then busied herself with picking up her quill and flipping it between her fingers, even daring to poke at the papers she had been ignoring. It made him glance down at his own abandoned work.

Talking to her, however, was work of a different kind.

Despite her attempt to brush off her more serious reply, she had truly given him an answer; which was more, he knew, than her oldest and supposedly closest friend could say. A strange mix of guilt and pride swirled around his gut till they canceled each other out, leaving him with just the feeling of a small pit. Try as he might to convince himself it was out of his own heart-felt concern for her, the truth put a poison barb through this, spoiling the whole bushel of sentiment at once.

There was still something which he could clutch at to try and dissuade the feeling though. Unfortunately it was his own fault this time for leaving the mood on a comical note, one which he would have to undo if he even hoped to properly convey his words.

He lightly cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on his thumbs as they pressed together in his interlocked hands, only glancing up at her when necessary.

"Freya," he started, waiting to catch sight of her turning attention and letting his deepened tone register with her before continuing. "If there's anything I can do... would you... That is—if it would be beneficial..." He paused before he could further stammer himself down this road, and then picked up again when he was sure he had his words chosen more carefully. "I could... if you wanted to... share my own memories with you, perhaps—"

"No."

His eyes stayed locked down onto his hands at the edge of the desk.

"Thank you... but, no."

Her tone hadn't been nearly as harsh as his when delivering the same blow, but it had been plenty firm. It was a good thing really, as he hadn't been at all confident in actually following through with his offer. And anyway, he wasn't really meant to know the full details enough to be making decisions about his confidence levels. Unbeknownst to her, as there had assuredly been no birds of any kind listening at the eaves at the time, he had been imparted with information beyond her own brief explanations of what went on during her meetings. Thus, he knew that the finer points of sharing his own memories of their time together so that she could perhaps, with enough hope, regain things in the same arduous way she had been for the past couple of weeks, were not exactly simple. It really was good then that she had stopped his own foolish rush to aid her.

But even so, it left a sharp pierce in his chest.

"Could you..."

He glanced up at the sound of her voice and watched her mull over her words before continuing.

"Could you ask me again later? I appreciate the offer," her chin lowered slightly so that her eyes were angled up at him, shining with sincerity, "really. I do. But..."

"But it's already a lot," he finished for her, as the deep breath she had taken hadn't seemed to have brought with it an easy finish to her words.

With a tentative smile, she nodded.

He did so as well in return.

"Of course."

For the rest of the evening work period, though he finally found his focus for his work, his chest couldn't seem to dissolve the hard stone lodged within it. It wasn't as if he could freely let his mind wander off too far in front of her, and besides, his paperwork did require actual doing. So, he sat and muddled through, until things were wrapped up as much as they could be before the lengthier weekend block of time, Freya was nodding off against her palm, and he had to say goodnight at their new leaving off place at her office door.

Unfortunately for him, before he could escape, or even do much more than blink, this sentiment ended at _'good_ —' as his chest was given a rattling by Freya hugging him in a proper squeeze.

"Happy birthday, Severus," she said upon releasing him, looking up with a wide sleepy smile. "I hope it was a _princely_ one... and I promise no more teasing; I'll bin the throne."

He nodded rather mechanically, torn between trying to think of something more meaningful to say back, and wanting to turn and run before he asked for a more lengthy birthday hug that he could properly enjoy. He settled for a tight smile back that was more of a twitch, and took his leave from her doorstep rather hastily.

With each step down to the dungeons his boots felt heavier, and by the time he was at his office door, he was repeating his resolution in his head like a mantra to keep from turning back.

Over the holidays, in a guest room at his relative's house, with his newly gifted clothes still smelling lightly of her perfume and his head full of thoughts of her from the past twenty-four hours, he had resolved it then and there. This was inappropriate. Not only because he was behaving far too friendly with someone in a precarious state, but because this was not how he should be acting in the first place. Without Freya around to diffuse his mood, he had been left grimacing at every embarrassing mental replay of his actions, glad the rest of his family was all sour-faced as well and hadn't noticed anything off. But he wasn't some idiot schoolboy, doomed to be strung along by fleeting fancies, making an utter fool of himself and unable to orderly deliver his words without tripping over them. He rightly knew that things needed to be precisely thought-out and properly planned.

Such as his planned decision to simply give it up.

The end goal, the future that this pathway in his mind led, was only someplace that he was not willing to go poking around with even a twenty-foot pole and every known protective magic in the world. He wasn't meant for such a future. He shouldn't be bothering her in this way with thoughts he could scarcely quantify. He had plenty of other deeply cutting guilts to getting on with. Things which he couldn't just forget. He was no prince.

So the dull ache in his chest as he drifted through his office got only scorn from him. He wasn't meant to be sulking about what he was not fit for, but instead be glad to have even that little glimmer of hope that he could at least some time in the future potentially share his memories with her. That was the only thing he was good for now; a final gift to repay what he had done and then call it even so that he could be free of this feeling. He let his bag fall from his arm onto the desk without even looking as he passed straight across and up to his bedchamber, hopeful for sleep.

However, what awaited him stopped his progress no further than the doorway.

It was an odd thing to want to give someone something—anything—even the smallest token. As if realizing the impossibility of physically giving a person the whole world and settling instead for whatever one could grasp within their limited reach, hoping beyond hope that it would hold the same worth.

It was a foolish thing, though. It lacked any structure or sense. Because, in truth, he had nothing good to give her that could ever measure up.

Candlelight was bouncing off the stone walls, the source of it coming from his dresser. He had no candles in this room though, and in fact, these were not the everyday kind.

Striding over in mute disbelief, he first stared down at what was closer to the edge of the furniture: a little card standing up to display a handwritten note, the ink dry as if it had been written and placed hours prior. Behind it though, the mini personal-sized cake looked fresh as could be.

" _You don't have to tell me if you like it or you throw it out, but I thought you deserved a proper one. —Freya x"_

The sigh that escaped from his chest, which felt as if leaking the last of the life out of him, was so great it nearly threatened the burning tips of the candles and had him scrambling to stop the air as if by force of will from his protectively raised hands. With more care, he lowered them back to his sides, his shoulders going slack as he watched the dancing fire settle down, and sighing once more in a long, slow, very pained way.

_That's the very thing though_... _I don't. I don't deserve it._

This only proved the integrity of his resolution: Freya was too good a friend for him to risk disastrously messing all of that up. Not after he had come so close to doing just that. He had been down this road before, and while it had ended rather apocalyptically and he doubted those circumstances could ever align into being again, he still wasn't enthusiastic to try it with his luck. He was already pushing those bounds just by getting to call her a friend. She was more than that though, and it seemed absurd to lower her to this. And her eyes on that night of Christmas had looked so...

And he was doing it again. Even after he had resolutely decided against this. It always seemed so simple when he was away, the clarity coming to him with the ease of being miles apart, but so much more difficult to achieve here. He really wasn't meant to be anywhere near her. Though, he was. Sitting in front of a fire he shouldn't touch, a sun he shouldn't fly too close to, a flame to which he definitely should not succumb. It was a good thing she hadn't brought up that he always sat across from her when there was plenty of room on the sofa beside her.

He wished that he could have worse friends. Or at least ones that didn't make him feel so inadequate. One that didn't make things so difficult. One that could understand that he was plenty used to having his birthday lumped into Christmas and overlooked, and know not to waste the effort shining a light that was far too bright onto him, making him do such stupid things as offer up sharing his innermost thoughts and memories when he knew quite well that he would never.

He stood in the shadowy room, staring into the tiny flames on his beautiful cake for a long while, unable to do something so awful as to snuff out that which looked so perfect with a wish he should not make.

The next morning, he indulged in possibly his most unhealthy breakfast ever, and casually thanked Freya in the middle of their conversation about exam planning without ever mentioning why.

Thus the sleepy month of January continued. And eventually, with much less cake, the swing towards normalcy did hold steady. For him, a little too lockstep with how December had been, however, as his least favorite thing again came on Sundays.

His first private meeting of the new year with Dumbledore had been right when he'd returned from holiday, and he had gotten quite the earful of information. It had mostly been to do with his now-revoked travel ban, as, since Freya was still engrossed in her own business, he truly would be called upon to step up to that task, which he had been more than eager to accept. But Dumbledore had given him more than just that to think about.

"I saw an old friend of yours the other day."

Severus, having been staring at the carpet from his usual central position stood before the headmaster's ancient desk, now looked up at this slightly alarming news.

"Not one," Dumbledore continued, "that you made mention of before Christmas. This one has apparently not been seen for the past six months." His blue eyes held steady as if gauging the reaction to this before he revealed any more. "He was apprehended last week with the help of the International Department; in Bulgaria, I believe...?"

The memory of a familiar accent sounding in his mind made his head rise further in recognition. Having been following the papers much more closely lately, he remembered as well seeing the arrest be mentioned. He could do without people in Azkaban being referred to as his friends, though. "And?"

"And he happened to mention you."

This time his gaze towards the carpet held, as his tightening jaw restricted the muscles in his neck, freezing with the rest of him. He was just getting _out_ of trouble with the papers and the populace.

"Mentioned me—?"

"And thankfully just that. Your name was thrown in with several others, but of course yours was the only one that could be vouched for." Dumbledore inclined his head. "By myself. Of course."

If he was expecting thanks, he would find himself waiting quite a while, as Severus had no current nor future plans to direct his eyes towards anything other than a bookshelf, his lips tightly closed. Dumbledore gave a quiet sigh.

"Most regrettably," he went on, his calm voice sounding more forced, "there are things in this world which I cannot predict; the future, the weather—and what reporters will or won't choose to sensationalize for their otherwise admirable work. This could be seen as a good thing, coming at an opportune time when I have already arranged the papers to correct themselves, which one might infer was me being rather thin-skinned and overplaying my hand, but I can defend myself in saying that it was not for my own reputation only to one person alone." He paused as this person in question finally raised his eyes, though still possessing a slightly mutinous expression. "Fortunately, people do not like to have their opinions swayed back and forth, and they will inevitably lose interest if anything else were to come to light. And if that does happen, I will try to give forewarning this time. Though," he lowered his chin to peer over the tops of his glasses, "it was my understanding that you would have been prepared for this inevitability."

"I was," Severus snapped.

"And yet you ran," Dumbledore countered as if accusing him of no more than having milk with his afternoon tea.

"I did not—run," he said, shocked that this was being brought up so abruptly right when he had thought the topic had been closed after not hearing a word of it last meeting. He didn't have the patience currently to be heaping any more guilt onto his plate, or playing nice. "That wasn't the reason—… I..." But a hand was held up to stop him before he could sort out his excuses, and he angrily shut his mouth.

"My point," the older wizard went on in a calming tone, "in bringing this up was not to upset you, but to make sure that you are prepared. It will once again be vital that you play your role perfectly; it may now even be beneficial for things to be this way. I did take care not mention why it was that you were cleared, after all... You are still prepared to carry things out as planned?"

His shoulders warily slackened as he accepted that this wasn't meant to be an argument, narrowing his eyes as his mind more eagerly switched over to business.

"Of course," he said with cool confidence. He was more inclined to believe that it was Dumbledore who wasn't prepared to let him off on his own to complete an errand of sorts. This thought was further supported by the clipped and brief response he gave.

"Good."

His blue eyes lingered over him for a moment, making Severus want to stubbornly hold his gaze as if to ward off the intrusion, but not wanting to instead welcome in one of a different kind. They both parted their attentions to other more interesting things in the room, going quiet in such a way that Severus had come to expect could mean that he would either be trapped in here for another fifteen minutes, or he was about to be dismissed. There was no way to tell until the headmaster had his time to silently sift through his thoughts, and so he could only wait, still, after all this time, preferring to stand rather than sit.

"...And did you, perhaps, get the chance to speak with Freya lately?"

At this, his thoughts seemed to flatten out. So, it was to be another fifteen minutes, then.

The cause for his reaction was not the threat of spending more time here, however, but of a need to now use a particularly cautious approach.

"She's fine," he answered in a dismissive voice, keeping his brows creased and his eyes focused where they had been on the clawed foot of the desk, as if still too caught up in his irritations about his own troubles to care much for this change in topic.

He felt almost as defensive as if the question had been posed about his own well-being. It was a bit too late for him to be acting as a guard to her personal information, however, considering what he had found out his previous visit here, prompted from his own voiced question.

Trying to broach the subject as a mere interest in the mechanics of this proposed return of her memories via Dumbledore's own, which he had casually slipped out that he knew of, had not gone unnoticed by the astute headmaster. Although, he had answered all the same, stating that Severus was right to be intrigued, as it had plenty to do with something which might be of particular personal interest.

Legilimency; or as Dumbledore had put it, a version of the same sort, but achieved by phoenix magic instead, and much more amicably than it was often used among wizards. As demonstrated with phoenix song, which Dumbledore had explained as if he were the only one in the room who had ever experienced it, it plays within the listener's very core—directly into their mind. He had also added off-handedly that there were other known magical creatures capable of Legilimency as well, further having made Severus kick himself for not putting this all together.

He had been somewhat glad to have never experienced this from her, as the concept of mutually sharing his mind with anyone was viscerally repulsive to him, but he had wondered why he never knew this about her. He had just been feeling most uneasy about the possible reasons, when Dumbledore had brought up that he hadn't found out Freya even had a human form until years into their knowing of each other; she had always communicated with him in this alternative way, using thoughts rather than speech. For him, it had been the opposite. Either way, then, it was obvious that she was simply secretive about herself no matter what.

Which—as he concentrated his mind on being frustrated with Dumbledore for not at the very least mentioning a second time to the staff that he wasn't a Death Eater plotting their demise so that he could return to eating his meals in peace in the Great Hall—only made him more determined to follow his assigned duty of reporting back about her state to the barest of minimums. Besides, informing Dumbledore that she was currently more open with him wasn't exactly the kind of news he wanted to be breaking when he was just starting to be trusted.

"She's just tired," he went on as if it held so little interest to him that he could only recall the boring details with some deliberation, "but she is handling it. She hasn't set anyone ablaze, at any rate."

"Thank you, Severus. I am sure if someone had been set on fire within this school, I would be hearing about it from you first and foremost."

He blinked languidly back at Dumbledore's unamused gaze, mulishly unwilling to appear apologetic for his empty words that were only meant to pad the dead air of what he was not sharing. All the previous meeting's talk of Legilimency had made his guard over his own mind extra alert, and he was forgoing his manners particularly to instead focus on keeping his thoughts blank and sterile with more easily accessible emotions.

Dumbledore broke their stare with a sigh, gazing out to the windows as if checking that they still were not being overheard by anyone who might fit nicely on the sill.

"The sleeplessness is to be expected," he said. "It will be her dreams keeping her awake through the night."

Severus frowned. "Dreams?" He was under the impression that she was sleeping more lately, not less.

"Oh yes; dreams. I had wondered how she would handle this period while keeping up with her teaching..." His wizened eyes lingered on the window as he nodded slowly, seemingly at his own thoughts, before turning back. "As I have said: she _will_ remember. And it will be... quite disorientating."

Itching to know more, while knowing full well he had already decided not to pry, he turned this over in his mind for some time until his own eyes drifted towards the scenery through the glass. He watched the morning light where it had begun its slow creep along the floor, inching further inwards.

Before leaving the office a moment later upon dismissal, the thought occurred to him that Dumbledore had not said for whom it would be disorientating.

It did turn out that keeping a close eye on Freya had been a good idea, though he still resented being told to do so, as he was perfectly capable of becoming consumed with thinking about her all on his own and did not welcome this further reasoning.

He arrived to her office late one evening, having been busy taking care of his Head of House duties, which had piled on at the start of the new term.

Plenty of students were having trouble with his class—unfathomably to him, as he had specifically gutted his course plans to the simplest of concepts just for them (as well as to abide by restrictions set by the Ministry) —and he was now being forced to pay extra attention to those furthest behind with additional lessons after class hours. It was almost enough to give him doubts about crunching all of the standard year lessons down a grade so that the more advanced levels could actually be advanced, which had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now his fifth-years were rabbling that they weren't going to be on schedule for exam preparation, and their entire futures would come crashing down if they didn't pass, which was somehow his fault. He was mostly tuning all of it out, knowing their Ministry-standard exams would be a cake walk compared to his classes, and that all of them appeared to be capable of passing by those regulations. That didn't mean they couldn't stand to learn a thing or two with the pressure on. Besides, should they actually pass, they would do well to be more afraid for his upper-level curriculums.

In the end, he was hurrying through Freya's office in a weary, mildly irritated blur, pausing only to knock on the second door as always (despite the fact that she left it unlocked for his visits, it was still her sleeping quarters as well, and he was determined to remember to treat it as such) before letting himself into the sitting room behind. A strong bout of déjà vu had him coming to a dead stop just inside the archway.

His pace from here slowed, quieting his steps as he cautiously approached her with an amused smirk.

"Sleeping on the job again?"

Her head snapped up from where it had been laying on black leather, her arms encircling the little book. He raised a brow as her eyes wildly looked around until they found his staring down at her—and then his smile promptly vanished.

"Severus?"

He was dropping to sit beside her at once, his bag falling from his shoulder, mirroring her motion to grab onto him where she could, ending up with her hands clutching at his arms. But before he could even give voice to his concern, it was stolen from him.

"Are you alright?" she asked breathlessly, her brows tightly knit and her bleary eyes fighting against their blinking to search his face for something which he could not fathom but had his expression snapping into an even more confused frown.

"What—me?" He glanced at his hand on her shoulder as if checking for physical evidence that indeed he was the one trying to jump to her aide, while she was the one who had jolted from her sleep in a blind panic, looking like she might have been emerging from an internal warzone by her wide terrified eyes. He had never heard her voice so brittle before, and to hear her speak his name in that way had immediately struck him. However, the situation seemed almost the opposite, with her hands gently patting at his arms and her eyes, still in a haze, darting all over him as if checking for some grievous injury. It was deeply unnerving, as if she knew better than he did that something was terribly wrong with him, and he was suddenly afraid of her finding whatever it was. "I'm fine," he said with emphasis to hopefully get her to cut it out. "Are... you alright?"

She met his gaze once more, though this time she seemed confused that he had spoken, and it wasn't until after a moment of vacant blinking that he was relieved to at last see she did appear to be coming to her senses, taking in a deep breath and looking around the room for the first time instead of just at him.

"I... Oh." Her hands dropped from his arms as she was distracted with her gradual realization, and he hesitantly slid his away as well. His attention stayed marked on her face though, as she slowly bent forward, dropping her head into her hand. "...Oh."

He wasn't at all sure what to do, as the sensible thing of perhaps asking her some stabilizing questions to see where her mind was currently at seemed a bit invasive when he wasn't yet sure what was going on. He teetered on the edge for a moment, back and forth between if this would count as butting in or if he could be of service. Ultimately, for now, he landed back to the neutral option where his instinct had originally driven him, raising his hand to again place it on her shoulder.

Before his fingers ever reached her, she jerked around with a much-changed expression, causing his hand to freeze.

"Don't touch me," she snapped. "Stop looking at me like I'm some helpless animal."

The look on his face must have been quite shocked, because she almost immediately changed before his widened eyes like the flick of a switch.

"I... Oh—" Her hands went to her mouth. "I'm—I'm so sorry—"

"It's—alright, I'm just concerned..."

Her eyes lost focus again, falling away from him. "It's my head," she said, dropping it once more, this time into both hands so that her hair spilled forward, hiding everything behind curtains of shiny red. "Just hurts..."

He watched with sharply increasing worry as she looked to be swaying where she sat. His hesitation was promptly abandoned as he set his jaw.

"Freya. Come here," he commanded with stern importance, yet still careful to keep his voice soft and low in consideration to her stated pain. She glanced up at this request, looking quite surprised as her shoulders were guided by his light touch until she was facing him as fully as he could position her, side-by-side on the couch as they were. It was good that her eyes were blinking wide at him, because it was there that he first wanted to properly inspect. She was looking plenty alert now though, focusing with full—if not a bit stunned—attention back into his close proximity stare, and he moved on to her head itself. His hand ghosted up to one side, staying an inch away from actually touching her hair, her warning, although he knew she hadn't meant it, still fresh in his mind. "Does it feel like a headache? Or something else?"

"Um..." She stared for a moment, apparently still quite dazed, before her brows crinkled in thought—and then had to drop her gaze as her fingertips attempted to massage the skin down smooth, as if just this small tightening of muscles had been enough to further her pain. "Bad headache?" she speculated, her eyes squeezed shut. "My head feels hot."

"You feel hot?" Well, that wasn't a good sign. What exactly was 'hot' to one who was functionally fireproof? He wished he had a book for this type of physiology—and not one on Care of Magical Creatures. "May I...?"

Her eyes opened briefly in startled awareness of his hand moving to feel her forehead with the back of his fingers, but she closed them once more, clearing her own hand out of the way in apparent concession.

"It's just... painful because it's hot," she mumbled, as he gently tested the temperature. His hand hovered with a gap between at first, not quite wanting to put himself in need of medical care too, before finding that the heat radiating from her skin was not at a dangerous level, and proceeding with tiny pats before at last pressing firm. As he gauged the direct heat, her words belatedly reached his preoccupied mind, making him squint. "I mean—the other way," Freya corrected herself, waving a hand as the rest of her remained still. "It's... hot because it's—whatever. That feels better, actually..."

His hand twitched in surprise as hers returned suddenly to hold it in place, and she leaned forward against it. He blinked, acknowledging that he was no longer the owner of this hand, glad he had a backup on the other arm, though it would be sad to bid this one farewell.

"Er, you don't feel any warmer than you normally are."

"Really?" Apparently soothed, her voice had dropped to a dreamlike whisper. "Hm..."

He gave a slow nod—and then realized stupidly that she couldn't see him with her eyes still closed. He was left gazing in silence at the way her eyelashes stood out against the tops of her cheeks, looking as if she could have been asleep even in her odd pose, barely a foot from him, until they gradually blinked back open.

"How do you... know how warm I 'normally' feel?"

Holding quite still, he stared back into her questioning eyes. His mouth popped open to answer, but his brain was still scrambling like a cornered rabbit a moment behind.

"I... In December—you were showing off about not being cold, and you made me feel your hand."

"Ah... Right..." She squinted hard at him and he could feel her forehead scrunch up behind his hand, causing her narrowed eyes to turn into a wince and her to press his hand down even more.

"I know a spell—for headaches," he said quickly, both in haste to ease her pain and to move away from this topic. "It isn't quite perfect, but it would be—"

"Severus," she said with a weary sigh, her eyes closing once more, "you absolute treasure. You can't use magic on me."

His mouth hung open as his brain calculated this, unable to process for a moment that he could have made such a mistake, and slowly becoming aware of why he had made it, as his eyes caught the corners of her lips curling upward at the silence from him.

"Right," he said sourly, pursing his mouth shut before he could utter any more brilliant ideas.

He used his chance of not being watched to scowl at his own idiocy, giving his head a small shake—and then quickly flattening his expression out to a smooth mask as her eyes opened, her grin still in place. He knew this was quite the improper time, and he was still very concerned for her well-being, but the way her eyes were drowsily blinking up at him was very distracting to his helpful cause. He couldn't even keep up his annoyance. A frown began to form on her features and his eyes darted away—but they were drawn back in as she pulled her head back, separating from his hand to look between it and him distastefully.

Well, how was it meant to be his fault that he lost his cool (in his hand, of course)? Between her hot skin and the warmth of the robes she had gotten him—and his own embarrassment. She should have just let him freeze in the dungeons if she wanted a mobile pack of ice for a friend.

He reclaimed his now rendered useless hand, averting his glare out to the desk in front of them. The image of Freya covering her eyes, thumb and forefinger on either of her temples, was still in his peripheral, but he refused to look back this time. He could be useful in a less direct approach.

Slipping into an interior pocket of his robes, he drew his wand and directed it towards the main grouping of lights on the mantel of the fireplace. Still wincing, she looked up as the room grew dimmer at his command, adjusted for visual comfort. He left the fire itself untouched, avoiding putting them in too much darkness.

"Better?" he asked with a sideways glance.

"Yes... thank you..."

"I don't suppose you would like to learn how to at least help yourself?" he queried curtly, meaning to pass on the spell to her.

"The only way I'm helping myself," she said in the same soft voice, as if her own speaking volume was a problem, "is if I fancy locating a guillotine at this hour. And, wouldn't you know it, I'm not sure Hogwarts has one." At his disturbed sideways look, she let out a quiet sigh. "It doesn't work like that. It's an all-or-nothing sort of thing."

He kept his skeptical glance on her for a moment. "What if... you got a papercut?"

She glanced back with a thin smile and a mirrored sarcastic look in her eye. "Spellotape. Works wonders on book binds, leaky cauldrons—and leaky phoenixes." She held up her finger and wiggled it as if it were wrapped in the clear adhesive like a bandage holding in blood, making him double check that it wasn't, as he couldn't be sure how far she was stretching the truth. His eyes followed as her hand retracted back to her forehead, massaging as her faint smile turned back into a grimace.

However much she joked, he was sure at least some of it was true, and he considered for a moment what a frustrating thing it must be to wield such healing magic but be unable to use it for herself. Such is the way of balance in the world, though he rather preferred the art of learning how to bend that balance to one's will. He let her sit in silence for a while as he gathered up his thoughts, checking and then re-checking before he spoke again, absolutely sure of himself this time.

"A potion." He waited until she had turned to look at him, her brows cautiously raised but not jumping in to tell him he was mistaken, before continuing. "Not as common for relief from headaches, but then most remedies relating to the brain are imperfect." If you didn't know what you were doing, which he frustratingly did know perfectly well in spell-form and would have been confident in demonstrating, whereas on the other hand, while he knew the effect would still be positive, with the potion he had in mind... "It would take a little bit of time, but not much. If you—"

"Severus."

He bit back the rest of his words, accidentally just a tad too hard in his peaking frustration.

"Just... relax, will you?" With an imploring look she leaned over closer to him, patting at his arm. "It's just a... headache..."

He watched with unconcealed scorn as she had to right herself and hold onto her head, looking like she might be experiencing the circular room with more of a swiftly spinning aspect to it.

"Right," he said tersely, "and besides, a potion will really only work if the person trusts enough to take it."

"What?" Her head turned from its protective pose to shoot a look of disbelief at him, before having to shut her eyes with a noise of disgruntlement. "Would you _please_ not be an idiot while I'm in pain?"

He would have fired back with more, but he did feel bad undoing all his efforts to help out, and she was suddenly making a distracting move, besides. He watched, perplexed, as she huddled over towards him, nearly closing the already small gap, her head still lowered in one hand, while the other reached out for his that was closest to her. After at first jerking his hand away, as he had seen this same scenario play out once before and wasn't near as keen on allowing it again, he relented only when realizing she was looking to swap her hand at her forehead out for his colder one. He once again felt the strangely too-warm—but not quite so for her—smooth skin against the back of his hand as she pressed her fingers into his palm, holding it in place. As he stared, what he could see of her expression mellowed, and she let out a long quiet breath.

"You know," she said slowly, and he was surprised at how her quiet voice could sound much louder up close, with nowhere else for it to project but directly at him, "it was a really long list of people that I had to read through and remember..." He noticed for the first time that it almost seemed as if she was holding his hand lower than before, obscuring her eyes from his view on purpose. "And you're still one of the only people on it that I actually trust."

His hand was raised without his doing so, just enough so that she could show her eyes, peeking up at him with calm sincerity and so close that even in the low light he could make out the color of deep amber.

"I trust you, Sev... I'd just prefer it if you stay here and keep me company instead."

A whole-hearted blink from his statuesque stare was all he managed in return.

He had no earthly idea how to respond to this, except he now felt the need to check that her brain wasn't potentially boiling and making her say ridiculous things. Or perhaps that she had pulled him straight into whatever fantasy universe she had been dreaming of before. However, this would have to be something concocted from his own mind, as there were none of the horrors she had apparently been running from here—or so it seemed, though his current stunned silence and uncomfortable swallow might prove otherwise.

"Are... Are you sure you're alright?" he finally got out.

Her dubious grin was hampered by her attempts to not scrunch her brows too hard, but the delivered effect was the same as she softly laughed. "Yes, for the last time, I think I'll pull through. I'm not dying here, it just hurts."

His eyes lingered over hers as if he didn't quite believe her, though it was rather that he simply hadn't heard her at first. As the words caught up to him, his chin tilted up slightly in confirmation. "Right. Good."

"Yes," she agreed with a pointedly bemused look, "it's very good, this whole staying alive thing." As he snapped more to his senses with a sharp frown, she let out another laugh. "You know, for someone who fights off help like it's going to kill you, you sure are pushy about it yourself."

He bristled, about to protest, but as he didn't really have a defense and something else had just crossed his mind, he changed his words at the last second. "When have I given that impression?"

"Um... Just last week?"

His gaze drifted away in disappointment, remembering her offer about his Mark. He had thought for a second, as he often did, that she might be remembering something beyond just the surface level that she knew. She was so close at times, as if she were following some intuition that was actually her deeper knowledge—that he knew must be engraved on her brain somewhere if she was dredging up the memories from her dreams—without even realizing it. Not for the first time, he wished he could have a proper study of this quandary, where he could sit her down and ask all the probing questions that he had.

"You really wish I would remember, don't you?"

His attention alerted back to her at once, realizing she was still peering at him from under his captive hand. Looking away again, he adjusted his increasingly uncomfortable arm so that the back cushion of the sofa could take the weight of his elbow, helping out a little and buying him a second to think of how to answer her question.

"Of course," he said, careful to keep the seriousness in his tone to what would be a normal friendly level of concern. "I want you to recover."

"Right..."

He was deliberately keeping his aloof gaze averted to the desk, just noticing that the now recognizably styled diary she had been using as a pillow didn't have any loose pages sticking out of it, and the cover looked brand new.

"...And you felt my temperature just by casual happenstance. In December. When I only saw you once."

As if by conditioning from being caught in lies before, his eyes froze right where they were, pointed at the diary. He probably shouldn't have stopped breathing though if he was trying to avoid further suspicion. The way his lungs refilled as his gaze inched back over to her felt like far too much dangerous movement for one finding himself under such a spotlight.

Her eyes were waiting for him in a cool stare as he faced her, those eyes that he had been trying so hard to avoid, and he was immediately captured, ensnared as if in a golden cage. The corners of her lips tipped up in time with her brow as she spoke the single familiar word.

" _Liar_."

It was a real shame that he had already used up his limited capabilities of scrambling out from under her gaze, as he could now do nothing but helplessly stare back. Mercifully, she looked away first, lowering her eyes so that he could only see her lashes, and he could breathe normally again.

"I finished reading all my diaries weeks ago," she went on quietly. "I've known that we were drunkenly kissing in the woods the last time we properly spoke—er, well, before the kissing, that is—for a while now."

And just like that, breathing normally was a thing of the past yet again.

His free hand, which he had just used to cover up the coughing noise he had made as he turned away from her blunt words, now went up to subtly block off his eyes from view, copying what had been her earlier pose, with his fingers at his brow. _No, please, don't be vague about it; go right ahead and retell the whole thing._ He was certain that she must have forgotten that she was pressing his other hand to her forehead, because there was no chance of it still being cold enough to be of any relief—or it was just to further keep him trapped here in this conversation which he had not at all been expecting to have so soon.

His mouth vaguely formed out half the alphabet before he managed to get a single word out, "Yes, that did—happen—"

"I'm sorry."

If it had been anything else, he might have been relieved to be cut off before he could babble himself into a doomed spiral of nonsense. As it was, in the pause that followed, he would have preferred to have been forced to listen to her read aloud a very long essay on all the ways that he was an abhorrently disgusting reprobate, rather than to feel the painful ache that closed in on his chest just then.

"It's just... I read it, but I don't really... remember."

This wasn't so bad. Not nearly as bad as he had been imagining it for what was nearly two months now. Mostly because he had always envisioned it as her having enough of her memory to definitively state that she wished she didn't; that these memories weren't anything special to her and she wanted to forget it had ever happened. Not knowing left a little crack open in the door for his obviously beyond stupid heart to go clawing at with hope. It was the expression she wore on her face when he finally gave up pretending to be smoothing down his brows and lowered his hand to look at her that gave him a more devastating blow.

The irritation which he had felt grate against his nerves whenever she had looked at him with such earnest apologetic sympathy earlier in the schoolyear was nowhere to be found in him now. It was at least a small token of relief that she had finally given up trying to apply his warm hand to her aching head, though now she simply held it in her own, on her lap, down to which she shifted her gaze. For what felt like a long moment, he let her carry on absently touching her thumb to his palm, though it made his fingers twitch, as he assumed it might be the most that she would ever touch him.

In spite of everything, there was something that was most bothering him, slowly bubbling through the thick, numb feeling to the surface above all else. His hand abruptly flipped over to clutch hers, causing her to look up, startled by this and the directness with which he suddenly locked his eyes onto hers.

"It doesn't matter," he said with utmost certainty. "It wasn't that important." And it truly wasn't. Not compared to making sure she knew that he hadn't been lying about why he wanted her to recover, that it wasn't just for his selfish reasons. He simply could not let her think that he would be so low.

She blinked at him, seemingly now the one at a loss for words. "Um... It seemed—a little bit important," she mumbled, darting her eyes to the side and making him struggle to keep up his serious demeanor. "I guess I... do have quite a lot of details about it either way, though, so..." He was cast further down a peg, dropping his eyes as he lost the resolve required to keep them up, sure that he could have done without knowing that part. His self-berating imagination didn't need the help.

She let out a quiet sigh. "It's so odd..." His gaze flicked up only briefly to see that she was also looking down at their hands still loosely held together, appearing contemplative. "I remember seeing you at random times from the past few years; the war and all that, during meetings with Albus. I remember the night when he introduced you as a teacher, in the staff parlor." His eyes were losing focus on the visage before them, his full attention hanging on her voice, almost as soft and warm as her palm. He remembered the first time he had felt it, shaking hands in the dungeons, her proper introduction. "And the other things he showed me, from a long time ago... Just bits and pieces here and there, things he said were important to remember—and I do. I remember being in all those places. Living it, like I'm meant to; like normal memory. But then it's just—… nothing. The rest is just ink and words. I can't get a grip on it..."

If ever there was a time with her when he wished he could be someone else, someone who could say the exact right thing, to leave a positive impression, it was now. Above all else, in that moment, he wished that he could be someone who she actually wanted to remember. A man worthy of such an honor.

Slowly, as if his arm was moving before his mind had caught up to where he wanted it to go just yet, he let her hand slip from his as he raised it. His eyes followed upward, watching with all the concentration required of a spell, until he found that his fingers remarkably were at her hair, and she looked as surprised as he did that he was gently pushing it back.

"It's alright," he said in a voice that came out as a low murmur, "take your time."

It was a marvel in and of itself that she was not shying away from his touch, as he was sure there had been a long stretch of time in which she never would have let her precious hair be brushed aside like this, even though he was being as gentle as he could. He didn't tuck the lock behind her ear, but simply let his fingertips glide over, as his main focus lay solely in what her hair was framing rather that the silky feeling itself. Her eyes stayed on him with the same rapt attention, but where hers looked stunned, he was searching. He couldn't take the scant few seconds worth of pleasure it would be to gaze as he may have wanted, he was busy keeping perfectly alert for even the slightest sign that she might not want him quite so close nor quite so friendly.

When her surprise appeared to have worn off, her eyes blinking to the merest trace of a squint, his hand froze where it was at the side of her head. He softened the intensity of his gaze, but otherwise held his position.

"It wouldn't do you much good," he said with an air of casualness, "frying your brain in the process." He waited, his eyes inspecting back and forth between his hand and her expression, to see if this gesture would be allowed. Though her eyes remained fairly skeptical, the cautious smile that formed spoke her acceptance.

"Well," she said with a small shrug, "what's a totaled... few odd months of time to relive? Nothing too drastic. Really helps when you cut out all the boring bits."

The faintest hesitant tug pulled at the corners of his lips. "Right... and I'm sure that you've had the most boring hundred years of anyone."

"Must have. My list of things I wanted to remember from Albus was surprisingly short..."

His brows twitched just slightly at the thought of this, but he was more so preoccupied elsewhere. He had been trying not to shift his touch too much should it disrupt her sensitive head, but she so far had not reacted in pain to any of his continued delicate movements. Curiously, he dared to slip his hand beneath the hair he had been brushing back, touching the backs of his fingers to her bare temple, and pressed just the lightest amount. The reaction was instant, with her eyes closing and brows scrunching down... and then gradually back up. He watched in quiet awe, giving a breath of time before slowly massaging in a tiny circle. Her head tipped forward in one instant motion as if her neck had gone limp, and he had to fight back his grin, pleasantly entertained.

"Good?" he asked, unable to fully keep the smile out of his quiet voice.

Her only response back was to let out a short whine and lower her chin even more, her hair falling around her face but not quite hiding it from him. Feeling uniquely self-important, he nearly fully let loose his wide grin, and even held back from making any comments when she reached up to reposition his hand to the middle of her forehead. He stayed perfectly silent, watching her practically melt forward against his gently kneading hand, internally squashing down the tiny guilty part of him that felt he shouldn't be allowed this small thrill and letting himself openly stare. He could almost say that he was glad he couldn't have used magic just for this.

After a moment, adjusting her seating position slightly against the back cushion of the sofa, Freya finally spoke more than just a mumble, though her voice still came out lower and more sleepy. "Aren't you going to ask... what was on my list?"

It took him a second of frowning to piece together what she had said earlier, and another to wonder why she would ask this, as it seemed quite personal. "Did you... want me to ask?"

"No," she said with a tired sigh as she settled in more. He could just see her lashes flutter open for a second before apparently deciding to remain shut. "Not really. I was just hoping... you would keep talking." His hand slowed its circular pace against her skin as he watched her peaceful face. "Your voice is really nice."

It was strange to be so close to her, even physically connected in a small way, yet still feel he was watching from a world apart. He wondered for a moment if it happened more when she allowed him these times to not have to control his appearance as much, letting his face lull into security and him to feel like an imposter, hiding behind a curtain. Because when her eyes would open, he would undoubtedly go back to hiding the quiet wonderment he held.

He broke off his stare, glancing out towards the room. With a deep breath, preparing with more unease than he normally ever had for speaking, he spoke in a deep whisper. "Then... might I mention that I have gotten precisely zero work done for the night?" He glanced back to see her grin and silently laugh, scrunching her face up at the end in apparent acquiescence to being the guilty party here. "If I have to spend all weekend grading, I'm going to make you help with ingredient preparations."

"Oh no," she said with her wide smile not a bit deterred.

He knew she would never have been put off at the idea of helping him, of course, so it was safe to jokingly complain, though perhaps there might have been better—sweeter—things for him to whisper to her. That wasn't a role meant for him. And, as he fell promptly out of things to say, he enjoyed the short-lived moment where he could be happy to have gotten to help her, and to see her actually accept it from him. It sadly couldn't last, as he had rather thoroughly violated his own set conditions, with his gaze having slipped from its stoic boundaries down to fixate on her contented smiling lips, and hadn't left.

He failed miserably at upholding his end of this bargain for some moments more, subduing himself to the sunk-cost of it all as he used up the last of his time before her eyes would once more open, vividly and warmly remembering what she herself could not.

With a sigh that he tried to keep as noiseless as possible though it fully drained his lungs, he turned his head away and said, "One last time... I promise to stop being so 'pushy' afterward..." Freya lifted her chin, her eyes blinking open, and he glanced back to cease his massage, gliding his fingers upward to brush her hair back once more before dropping his hand with some reluctance. "Do you think you would be open to a more traditional sort of remedy?"

For what could have been the fifth time that evening he watched her scrunch her brows and then wince. He wanted to blame the headache for her abysmal pain avoidance learning, but he was starting to worry if the woman wasn't just bad with memory altogether. It definitely helped to lift up his final idea.

"Um... What?" she said, looking annoyed to have to be the one rubbing at her own head again. "What is it?"

He tilted his head forward to level his eyes at her in a pointed look. "Rest." Understanding smoothed her features as she nodded slowly, seeming to vaguely remember tale of such a thing.

"Ah... Actually, that sounds... Oh, but I haven't done any of my work either," she said with a guilty glance to the desk, biting her lip.

"And how much work do you think you could get done right now, exactly?"

"Maybe... two..." He raised a brow, to which she lowered her eyes. "...Sentences... written by one of the better students—but, I'm already falling behind, I can't put off any more work."

"Well then," he said with finality, dragging himself to his feet, "if you go to sleep now, you can wake up early." As she looked up at him with an unhappy stare, imagining, he assumed, how early it would actually be, he offered her a smirk as well as a hand. "I'll bring by coffee with breakfast if you like."

She still looked less than enthusiastic, but was preoccupied as she tried to stand. Even with the help of his hand, she went off balance immediately, and he saw the hazy look return to her eyes, fearing for a second that he might lose her to whatever was just below the surface. It seemed sitting still had been staving off the worst of it, but her headache hadn't lessened in the slightest.

"I'm fine, I can do it myself," she said in regard to his attempts to lead her across the room, even as she continued leaning on him with one hand and holding her other over her eyes. He ignored her hollow protest and continued his slow pace at her side. However, as they crossed the threshold of the more private half of the room, he realized he had made a mistake and was now the one trapped in his procession forward, despite the sight of her bed giving him considerable alarm. He restrained himself from shoving her off and darting for the exit, telling himself he was just being stupid. Besides, something he saw when he looked away as she sat down on the edge of the bed gave his mood a boost.

"Perhaps you should have this as well," he said, in a quick motion pulling out his wand to tap at the empty Slytherin mug on her bedside table, once for water and a second time for ice. The glow of the fire hardly reached here, but she just caught his movements as she was bundling herself under thick blankets and smiled, murmuring a warm thanks. He frowned as he realized she had gotten in bed rather quick. "Are you not going to—?" Her brows bounced up as he cut himself off, his expression freezing to an impassive stare at her suddenly very interesting lamp.

"I'll change when you leave," she said without hostility; but he was already turning around on his heel as if being pulled out of the room by a magnet, not even sparing a look behind.

"Hold on—"

"Goodnight."

"—I didn't mean you had to leave _now_."

He was just taking his first hurried step around the half wall where he would be separated and almost free when he heard the sound of blankets being abruptly thrown off.

" _Severus. Come back here._ "

He stared straight ahead, at the archway across the room that should have been his escape had his feet not stopped moving for some odd reason. And now, with his pathway obstructed by this invisible force, he had no more choice in his options but to turn back around, though much more slowly than his previous haste.

She was sitting propped up in bed with the blankets folded over her lower half, and her expression echoing the same unrelenting sternness that her voice had held. It could have been her pain making her look so provoked, or it might have been his own imagination, but as she raised a single finger and beckoned him return to her bedside, he had the very strong sense of being strung along by some dark creature that was seconds away from devouring him.

As he retraced his steps with apprehension, she laid herself back down, looking up at him with no more than sleepy exasperation and a small sigh.

"You didn't have to run off," she said quietly, "I just wanted to say one more thing."

"Which would be...?" His eyes were glued to her cup of water as he tried not to stand there so awkwardly.

Her eyes passed over him once, before she rolled onto her side towards him and reached out. It wasn't something he need have flinched away from, though he did, until realizing that her outstretched hand hadn't been trying to make contact, but was held out, palm up and waiting. With a deeply skeptical look—which she returned with a sly smile from her pillow, doing nothing to instill confidence—he placed his hand in hers, assuming this was the only correct answer.

Which, in fact, it was. Though his startled heart, as she gently pulled him forward and pressed the back of his hand to her lips, wished it hadn't been. His face screwed up, aghast and unable to do anything about it, as she fluttered her eyes open once more, smirking up at him.

"Thank you," she whispered in her warmest voice, which he only distantly and later realized was her putting it on for effect, "for being such a _prince_."

His mouth immediately snapped shut and he snatched his hand back as he straightened up.

" _Good—night_ ," he said over his shoulder, already bolting for the door, even as the sound of her soft giggling reached his ears, turning into a loud yawn halfway through. It wasn't fair that both were so musical, and that he couldn't Apparate out of rooms, nor could he fully make a fool of himself by running. He had to double back to grab up his bag where it lay beside the sofa, very nearly forgetting it. All the while, the half-lidded stare of her eyes was still boring into his mind as if it was chasing him over the threshold.

As he reached the archway, his pace strangely did find reason to pause, as he had heard a _fwump_ of cloth hit what sounded like the floor and he couldn't make sense of the noise for a moment, thinking she might have thrown off her blankets again. Then the realization whacked him in the back of the head, and he was dashing out of the room, closing the door, and setting the lock as if entombing a deadly trap.

If it hadn't been for the comforting thought that hopefully her brain was just melting, he might not have been able to get a grip on his own head, which, as he quickly made his way downstairs without looking higher than the floor, felt equally as melted. Or perhaps it was just that the lingering spot of warmth on the back of his hand had a baffling connection to the temperature of his face.

That night, while he did his work in the quiet solitude of his dungeon office, his quill kept making abrupt stops in the middle of where it marked the lines of writing as he read them. No matter how many times he dropped it to stretch and rub at the back of his hand though, the feeling didn't dissipate. It seemed it was lingering from his own memory; and that, unfortunately, he could not wipe away.

After a very irksome breakfast in which he had delivered not just coffee, but also a freshly-prepared potion with strict instructions to be used immediately for future headaches, Severus had wound up walking in on a sleeping Freya a handful more times over the next week, with the second time being the most fumbled.

He had decided not to wake her and risk setting off another terrible nightmare, instead having simply sat down to wait for her to wake up. But, after less than a minute of this, he had felt extremely awkward to be sitting with her unconscious form and gathered all his things back up, strode all the way to the doorway, only to then have felt even more awkward to be making decisions about coming and going without her ever having known, and once and for all rethinking that the risk was worth it, waking her up with a very loud clearing of his throat, and retaking his seat. No such panicked actions had been invoked, she had merely mumbled something about dragon taming being for twits and try-hards, before emitting an enormous yawn and asking if he'd like any tea while they graded.

All times following, he had gone straight to waking her up without hesitation, and no more headaches had happened on his watch. Though, he wasn't without increasing worry at the gathering dark circles under her eyes as the days passed. He had his own things to be worried with, however, and she didn't raise any troubles for him to comment on, besides.

Also, comfortable communication had all of a sudden become an issue between them. After his third meeting with Dumbledore, Freya had either caught wind of what was happening, or the two men had not been careful enough to check the windows, he never did find out which, only that she was particularly glum afterward. She was nice enough—or blunt enough—to at least make it be known that it was the planning that was taking place which was irking her, with distinct emphasis on the fact that said plans still stated only one person would be leaving the castle towards the end of January. He wasn't in any way budging over to be contrite about it, and he wasn't sure she would have been willing to listen even if he had put up a defense. He settled comfortably into the idea that her short temper about the whole thing was undoubtedly reflective of how much sleep she had been getting lately and contributing to her ever-busy schedule of seemingly re-establishing her entire life, which was the very reason of why she should not be going. Freya, meanwhile, swore up and down that she wouldn't be enacting any fiery retribution on anyone and was fully back in her right moral mind now, which she seemed to think was the only real reason Dumbledore was keeping her from the field and which Severus had his doubts about as he had seen her burn thumb-shaped holes through several pieces of paper lately.

It didn't help matters that she had very good reason herself to be angry with him. After going in and out of her room for weeks and having to learn her personal flavor of spell for locking up, he had brilliantly remembered, a punctual full month late, that a Ministry member had been attempting to break into her office while she had been gone. In his defense to and of himself, after the original newspaper story had landed back in December, he had been rather busy being a chaotic lunatic on par with what some of his students now seemed to think of him, as well as being a complete melt-brained moron the rest of the time after. He had tried to make it up to her by running a lap over both her office and her private chamber with his wand out checking for disturbances right alongside her, but even with their combined knowledge of spells, enough time had passed and the doors had been spelled by himself as well, that neither of them could find anything except that, yes, it did seem that someone had at least tried to break in. Nothing was out of place or missing though, and they had to eventually let it go, assuming that some unpleasant little man who worked in wand woods wouldn't have been able to break her spell.

By the time the day arrived that he would finally be leaving, all Freya had to send him off with was a stubborn glare and a begrudging ' _Try not to get yourself killed, it doesn't feel too great_ ' at the end of their short chat. She did give him a hasty hug as well though, which he appreciated more than he would have expected. It wasn't as if he would be gone more than—hopefully—several hours at most. It really wasn't a very momentous occasion. Certainly it was overkill for Dumbledore to have him meet him in his office right beforehand, especially as it had only made him fear that he had been about to change his mind in letting him return to the field. However, Dumbledore had merely wished him luck.

So it was that he had rushed out off the grounds, before anyone or anything could drop from the sky to stop him, with the unexpected and very welcome feeling of at long last regaining his freedom.

After which, fell ultimately flat several uneventful hours later.

It was nice, really—to be back where he was meant to be, performing a job that, while it had never ceased to leave him feeling hollow to the soul inside before, at least now was only a much-neutered version, and so much differently freeing to be trusted with apart from just visiting his harmless family—only, it was dead boring.

As Bellatrix had explained, with a circle of leftover friends around a dreary table some weeks prior— sounding perfectly sane to be sure, if sanity was measured in how disorderly it would make bats fly to hear tell of it—the general belief amongst those who had not gone quietly to Azkaban nor been so ashamed of their actions as to pretend to have been under the Imperius Curse, was that their master was still alive somewhere, possibly in dire need of their help. The obvious conclusion after falling off of that cliff of stability was that the Ministry had him—somehow, despite him being 'the great and wise Dark Lord'— and that they, his most loyal followers, should break him out. Severus hadn't been the only face at that table to look just the tiniest bit skeptical of this, and so thankfully it had been easier for him to squirm out from under the obligation of taking up this harrowing task, but the lack of support had been a different kind of snag. They were outnumbered now, the dregs of the last Death Eaters, and they needed support wherever they could find it. He had been sure, after hearing all this, that had been the reason he had been let in so easily in the first place. And, also, it's what had bought him time enough to return to the castle and wait. They needed to find more help, and they also needed something else. Bellatrix already had an exceptionally nasty note blighting beneath her own wanted poster, and looked to be wanting to add to it, as her first attempt to find information on where her precious fallen master had gone had not yielded her desired results. So it must follow that to try again at that which had already failed was the plan of action of the regrettably insane.

Nonetheless, they were now a toothless bunch. They wouldn't be allowed to currently still fortress themselves away in their little woodland mansion had Dumbledore come to any other conclusion upon hearing all of this. Plus, he had the clever spellwork of his spy to keep him well informed even from a distance, as Severus had left a little present upon leaving before Christmas. It had given them just enough information that things were coming to a head—sometime soon.

Thus, he was nearby, but not at all too near.

Having already lied his way out of the mansion once, he could not now go back on this and show up at its doorstep. Not unless he wanted to incur the suspicion of a house full of very twitchy wand hands. Outing himself and sending in a wave of Aurors to step right into that very same nest of desperate Dark practitioners wouldn't have been very ideal, either. On the other hand, it wouldn't have been good to get too wrapped up in the plan, too close, as the ending to it wouldn't be anything pleasant specifically because of said Aurors. So, he sat; awaiting the hopefully ever-nearing hour when the rat's nest would be vacated, and that small window of time would open, wherein he could alert back to the proper persons and everything could be set in motion to tip over the unsteady plans of unsteady people like no more than so many loose bricks. Or, so he intended.

So far he had seen, from out of the second-story inn window which he was staring, precisely nothing that he was looking for.

It was food—as often it was in war—that was the chink in every armor; even castles, and even wizards. They couldn't conjure any such good, prepared food to sustain them, and so it had to come from somewhere. By his calculations and quick investigating of the area surrounding the wood, there was one village nearby big enough to have its own row of fresh ingredient shops, with both a butcher and a baker. And, he had found, both had been having food go missing for quite a long time now.

Plus he had found traces of magic that could have only been from house elves in the alley round back, which was where he was now staring directly at, from what was a very cheap room with such an otherwise unlucky view. Honestly, he had no idea how most Aurors managed to stay employed when they couldn't find such obvious clues. They must all be too busy kissing Ministry official's toes or something.

Either way, it would be here that he would see evidence of a house elf about to steal food for its master who was in hiding nearby, or they wouldn't; in which case, he would have to assume they weren't eating, because they were on the move. It was a better tell than anything he could get on the mansion itself, so surrounded by anti-intrusion enchantments as it was, when he could no longer risk getting inside. He had set up things to hopefully tip him off directly anyway, but it couldn't be counted on to be exact when they could simply Apparate—he needed to be sure and cover every base.

Every base... including the ones behind his eyelids as they fell shut for longer than just a blink, pulling him teasingly into blank calm. He let them stay closed, enjoying the short break, content that he was still plenty awake enough to catch himself before he would nod off. Still though, it wouldn't do to tempt it. Rolling his neck, he got up to pace for the dozenth time around the small room.

He wasn't planning on spending the night, it was just the most opportune location to set up going in and out of, and had the view he wanted (after he had adjusted it to the left two feet, that is, hoping no muggles would wander down the less-traveled path and take notice). The small desk was where he was sitting when not on his feet, the bed getting no attention from him. He had been using his time, after the first hour of excited energy had long worn off, to get ahead of the grading he needed to do, all the while keeping the scrolls of parchment neatly tucked within his bag, ready for him to snatch up and depart at a moment's notice. But he had caught up on almost everything now, and if he did any more he wouldn't have much to keep him busy while he sat across from a certain woman, who was plenty distracting on her own.

He paced from the bed to the desk in slow procession, staring at the floor, a slight frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Truthfully, he was acting as no more than a glorified human bell on a door. This really wasn't anything important or special, and he knew it. It was just a simple thing that he could do to prove that he could be trusted to do it, while keeping up with his regular job as well. The other factor being, of course, that the person who normally would have been doing it was not in any place to at current. Judging by the pout she had worn as he left, which had him smirking off his gloomier expression when remembered, she would have been plenty ready—except that she would have found this even more dull than he did, and probably have fallen asleep immediately.

Thinking about her falling asleep, his face twitched as the mental image of her shifted to a shadowy sly grin with his hand held just an inch away from it, making him nervously lift his eyes to the window before going back to pacing.

He sincerely hoped that when he got back—preferably by later tonight, though if nothing happened he might have to decide whether or not to actually make use of his paid-for room or spend extra time setting up more alarm provisions—she would no longer be making such a big deal out of this. He was certain Dumbledore was still telling her everything she needed to know, as she had spoken of it with perfect accuracy when confronting him on it, so it wasn't like she was in the dark. She just needed to stay put for a bit and recover.

A slow, nagging thought of guilty realization was forming in his mind, but he shut it down with a tight creasing of his brows.

Absently, his hand went to a specific place overtop his robes.

Through the warm fabric, he could feel the rectangular shape of a small diary. He slipped his hand into the interior pocket and pulled it out, thumbing overtop the embossment on the black leather cover.

Well, on thoughts of what to do while people were away on missions, and he, currently, was away from her... but, no; he still was not the type to keep a diary. In the end, though, it was just an empty book. There was another use, one which he had always thought for months had been its purpose anyway, which he could now make a reality.

Sitting back down, he rounded up all his scholarly things back into his bag and set the book—now his intended planner—in the center of the desk space. It would do him some good to make headway on actually organizing his lesson plans, both current and future, all in one place, as at the moment they were mostly intangible in his head or written on scraps of parchment that may or may not be entirely lost by now. Organization had been one of his goals for the new year, after all.

He did follow one intended instruction to the letter; he brought out his red phoenix feather quill as he wrote, watching it more than his writing at first, so that his underlined heading was a bit closer to qualifying as crossed out. Other than this error, he kept his quill still the other times his eyes went up (to check out of the window in front of him), and made it half-way through the current quarter's plans in no time at all.

Until, however, after he was reinking his quill, he glanced back to the page to see that there was ink already seeping up from the paper where he had not yet written.

Squinting in confusion, and then cocking his head to one side in full disbelief, he didn't notice until it was too late when the fresh ink dripped from his raised and forgotten quill onto the paper in a top corner, finally breaking him out of his enraptured stare. But before he could even sort out with his hands what to do about the rapidly soaking ink blot, more ink was rising up unbidden from where it just had at the middle of the page, and he was too distracted to remedy the mark, his eyes going back over all the words now, only the top half of which were personally familiar.

Underneath his list, in much different handwriting and appearing in brassy gold ink, was the following confusing series of lines:

_Is this book enchanted? Could you please stop whatever it is you're enchanted to do, as you've almost lit a stack of papers on fire._   
_Hold on, is that a list of potions? Severus?_   
_HELLO? PLEASE STOP!_

He let his head fall forward until he was propping it up with his fingers at his temple, elbow next to the book on the desk, still focused to the last line on the page.

It wasn't really necessary for him to sort out that this was not at all a diary, nor was it a planner, but for the life of him he couldn't find a single word to say—or rather, write—to convey his astonishment and answer all the questions he suddenly had. He gazed down in stunned silence, mouth hanging slightly open, blinking until he could manage to slowly drag his quill back to the page.

_On fire, you say?_

He waiting in the same pose, brows raised, until the reply came no more than a few seconds later. This time he peered even closer, seeing each little fiber of the paper as it filled with ink to form the words.

_STOP! I keep closing the book, thinking it's done, and you keep making it light up again!_

Puzzled, he closed his own book, inspecting the cover. He ran his fingers over the raised feather pattern—and then hissed as they were burned, shaking off his whole arm and letting the book fall shut. Startled, he flipped it back open at once, surprised to see that the fresh would-be wet ink had not stuck the pages together, and that another line had appeared.

_Is this really... S?_

His expression flattened out. Very good of her to realize any correspondence could be intercepted while he was on a mission; and to give him such an astounding cypher for a codename.

_This is The Dark Lord. I have risen and am coming to kill you. Beware._

_Oh, very good, I can feel the sarcasm from here, I know it's you. Also, I know you're handwriting. Idiot._

He pursed his lips over his smile as he read and reread her words... and then reread his own words, with special focus on his handwriting, and suddenly didn't think this was actually such a fun bit of spectacular magic after all. His spiky, cramped writing didn't look anything like her curling, elegantly combined together in places lettering, especially since he had made his last line look particularly dramatic for effect. Before he could take any more notes on this, more writing appeared.

_Pretty neat gift, eh? Almost burned up my whole wardrobe, I had a bunch of stuff stacked on top of it, had no idea it was in there, but still._

_Have you ever considered perhaps_

His quill stopped before his next unthought-out word, but regardless, his black ink seemed to shimmer and sink in permanently without him having any way of stopping it. He frowned in dismay, trying to sort out the joke which now seemed too stupid to finish. Giving his head a little shake as if to clear his buzzing thoughts, he flicked his hair out of his eyes and finished:

_writing things down? You can be quite forgetful._

_I'm considering forgetting your birthday next year._

His tongue poked at the corner of his smirk, unable to deter it, and realizing he had no need to.

He straightened his back to gaze down from a distance at the whole book itself, absently thumbing the thick stack of yet to be used pages. There were plenty to keep up an entire archive of conversations if he wanted—if they wanted. They had written to the bottom of this page, her last line coming in slightly more bunched up than the rest, but things could easily be moved around to make even more room.

And there it would stay. With the ink set, smudge-proof, and hopefully on the same enchanted paper that she used for her diaries—permanent. Not a record of just his words, or hers, or his plannings, which now seemed inconsequential. It was capturing much more than that.

As he watched, the feather on the cover burned a dull golden glow, and he opened it expectantly, flipping to the next page at the top.

_Are you alright? How are things going?_

_Fine. No sign of spiders._

This time when he closed the book, it was with the intention of putting the first protective anti-snooping spell he could think of—and then two more for good measure—onto it. He might have to ask Freya what she used for her latches, assuming the slight possibility that she might know something different than him. Once he was finished, he opened back to the page again, just in time to see more gold lettering form.

_See you soon. Please don't die. x_

Though he could hear the sarcasm coming through the words on the page, he could also imagine her face showing just a tad too much truth behind it, the concern showing in her eyes as it had before he had left. He wondered if, in the future when she lost her memories again and read through this new record, she would be able to hear his tone of voice come off the page, and if her own would form in her mind the same as if she would form the words with her mouth. It wasn't exactly what he had always imagined, in his wildest dreams lately of sorting out a better situation where she remembered him every time, but it was something. Something that she had thought of all on her own, and she must have known and intended to be a written history in this way. Long before he had made things difficult.

He sat for a lengthy moment staring down at the little 'x,' entranced, so familiar with her handwriting by now, yet feeling more eager for it than ever. It was just the slightest bit bittersweet, as he compared the ink to her eyes, measuring up every flash of them as they looked up at him and finding it lacking just enough to make him homesick. Yet, he would never again have to be stuck in a predicament of not knowing what was going on back where he had left. He could just simply ask. Through a door, down several floors, across all of Britain; when he couldn't speak out loud, when he put up silencing charms, when he wanted to write her letters even though he had nothing worth wasting the time of an owl on; she was just at his fingertips, a jot of ink away.

She had well and truly done it yet again as far as gifts went. Which meant that he was falling behind yet again on repaying her. At this rate, he might as well just pack it in.

In fact, he might also have to give serious reconsideration to his whole New Year's resolution. As it was turning out, attempting to sway the future was quite the foolish endeavor. He didn't know why people bothered making resolutions.

A distant, soft popping sound dragged him away from where he was fondly running his finger along the outside edge of his new favorite book, and as his attention snapped upward, his mind turning over into a much different gear, he pocketed it protectively back into his robes.

_—***—_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. :')


	11. Promise

_—***—_

* * *

It was quite the gratifying thing to be a hero; to have one's picture appear in the headlines under those most heinous fiends, at last captured and put to justice; to be on the receiving end of such high praise and unilateral approval...

Or, so it could be assumed. As it turned out though, being knowingly involved in the arrest of the son of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on charges of being a Death Eater was something Severus was very glad to be a completely anonymous party in, with only a tiny one of his fingers poked into that pie by his whispered word to Dumbledore, and his whispered word down the line. No one was getting any kind of cheering praise with the papers on this matter, while the Ministry itself was in an absolute tizzy about everything even weeks later. Meanwhile, he got the fulfillment of sitting back and fading into the shadows, able to sleep soundly at night with no such spotlight on him.

Most nights, anyhow. There were still other things to be looked into, by one with a penchant for peeking into shadowy places that held that which was not meant to be found, and so his first more than productive leave of absence from the castle had not been his last. It seemed that Dumbledore had an endless list of things that needed looking into, half of which could be solved by use of the many instruments in his office, some of which could be gathered from the headmaster's own comings and goings from the castle on his various duties, and the rest...

His yawn echoed in the small enclosed stairway as Severus made the final steps back to his Hogwarts bedchamber after a long night.

He had so far avoided sleeping outside of the castle, but this meant having to stay up to some less-than-ideal hours, sneaking back in on sluggish feet. Still, it was worth losing sleep and having to crunch the time needed for his main job as he greatly appreciated the days he got to spend on his own getting to do work that flexed his mind, which was most welcome during the current season of the schoolyear, as it contained a notable lack of leisurely planning periods for him to spend in the research library. It was a freeing kind of solitude to be out.

And, of course, on these journeys he was never truly alone.

After he had swapped out his traveling cloak and robes for long-sleeved pajamas, and before sliding into bed quick to hide from the slight chill that clung to everything in the dungeons, he spared a second to place the journal he always kept on him nowadays into the top drawer of his dresser.

For a short while he had been forced to keep it locked inside a metal box, but, thankfully, after some filled-in pages of back and forth, and many more in-person talks spent correlating information about what types of spells were being used—and in between bickering—Freya and him had figured out how to tone down the heat of the alert spell on the front of both their linked journals. Apparently she must have only tested it out on her own (fireproof) self. It was a good thing the robes she had also gifted him were equally fireproof, or he would have had much more difficulty transporting the thing.

That bite of the first burn had long faded from his fingers, and he had become much more interested in exactly how the rest of the magic contained inside the book operated. It was almost an added bonus that Freya herself didn't remember, because it meant figuring it out together. Testing which and how many inks and quills worked, if they could put notes from outside paper sources within—they had even tried transferring other things, though Freya had stopped being as curious after she had ended up having to clean chocolate from her book in one failed attempt. All in all, it was—surprisingly—fun.

With his head on the pillow, he lay blinking sleepily up at the ceiling, the trace of a relaxed smile on his features as he visualized the most recent lines of ink that had been set within the journal. He had been out particularly late this time, and Freya had been apparently trying to keep pace with his nonexistent sleep schedule, as she had been writing back until just before he left—with sharply declining legibility and many more angry markings left overtop his own writing, so that it had looked more like she had been harshly grading him on his poor scheduling, circling and underling in particular his use of the word " _soon_ " in how much longer he was planning to be.

He couldn't understand why she was still so agitated the markedly few times he left the castle. She would undoubtedly always be seeing him in the morning regardless. In a guilty way though, he couldn't argue about it, as he enjoyed it just a tiny bit that it bothered her when he wasn't around. It made her write to him more often, and every missive was a small reminder that his words were worth remembering to her; every page a newly recorded memory that seemed to lessen the rift left behind by what was missing.

With a deep breath and the comforting smell of ink and parchment still on his fingertips, he pushed his hair back from his face and rolled over to fall asleep.

Only, he had already stayed up passed the point of tiredness, and was now buzzing on the second wind his body had generated to keep him going after having woken up at the crack of dawn and nearing the next. His mind was humming away, drowsy, but not quite ready to give up consciousness just yet.

Which may have been a good thing, as a sound outside the small high window suddenly had his eyes blinking back open, alert and listening in the dark.

If he hadn't just been spending half his day traipsing about in dangerous areas in an equally vigilant state, he might not have been so keen to such a generally harmless sound, but, as it was, the increasing scraping at the stone around the window had him sitting back up in bed, hand out, ready to reach for his wand on the nightstand.

However, before he could, his hardened stare up towards the warped glass reflecting the moonlight outside was interrupted—not because the window opened, smashed, or otherwise, but because what could only have been the culprit Apparated straight through it to the other side, much closer to his face than he had been expecting, making him jump—and then immediately heave a sigh of annoyance.

"What on earth are you—" He didn't have the desire to even finish his sentence, as he rather felt like a fool talking to her when she was like this. Instead, he rubbed a hand over his face and flicked the hair out of his eyes before fixing the phoenix fluttering on his bed with a disapproving look. "You know I can't understand you, yes?" But voicing this thought made him remember the way in which she _could_ communicate to him in this form, and he hurriedly cleared his mind. What was more, after trying to swat her away as she flapped towards him in a confusingly aggressive display, he realized that he had failed to estimate which form would be worse for her to be in under the circumstances, and as he squeezed his eyes shut against a second pop of flame, he was left opening them to a much more difficult scene.

Without nearly enough warning as far as he was concerned, he was face to face with a very disgruntled-looking Freya, who no longer had a harmless wing outstretched, but a very solid hand, placed right next to him and propping her up as she leaned in inches from his nose. Caught off guard, in his pajamas with no wand, he felt as if he should have been more prepared for an attack of this nature. What nature that was exactly had yet to be decided, as his eyes fell from hers, realizing she was just as dressed for bed as he was. Although, he didn't think he would have been able to pull off the over-sized button-down shirt as well as she did, especially if he was correct in his—immediately further alarming—observation that it might have been all she was wearing.

"Why—are—you—still—awake," she said in groggy monotone, making his eyes blink back up and his mouth snap shut where it had been hanging open.

Far too close. Far too on his bed. Far too much Freya for his overclocked brain to handle.

Unfortunately for her increasing look of annoyance—which he belatedly realized included much blinking, as if she was barely hanging onto wakefulness herself—he failed to answer for several more long seconds, as he was assessing the details of the situation and wondering if he hadn't fallen into a lucid dream state given that they seemed so far-fetched.

At last he found his voice, and a good reason to speak it, his brow furrowing. "And what are _you_ doing in my room?"

This was apparently not something she was willing to answer, as it only caused her to slump forward as if collapsing, her head hanging all the way down. Her hair brushed his hand at his side and he snatched it back to his lap.

"Severus," she said in a heavy voice, her reappearing face now looking pleading, "are you seriously not tired...? You have to sleep. C'mon—" He was once more harassed, though this time by a hand instead of feathers, as she tried to nudge his shoulders to lay back down, but he only swatted her away once more.

"Excuse me? Why are you—" He pushed her hand away again as she interrupted with more shoving and whining. " _Why are you_ —all of a sudden in charge of when I sleep?"

This time when her head hung down it was accompanied by a low dissatisfied grumble and it seemed she had exhausted all the fight left in her. Indeed, instead of just leaning unsteadily on her one hand propping her up on the already shaky plane of the mattress, she promptly fell all the way over, rolling onto one side so that her head hit the pillow— _his_ pillow, which he was irked to see her hair bouncing off of as the bed took her sudden weight—and she looked ready to peacefully fall right to sleep upon accepting this defeat.

"You have to..." She was interrupted by her own yawn, covering her mouth, her eyes not opening back up afterward. " _You_ have to sleep... so that _I_ can sleep."

He looked down at her in utter confusion, his head tilting to one side. She said it as if it was some non-negotiable clause that he had signed and should have read more clearly, but he was much more willing to believe that something had finally short-circuited in her brain. Or else she truly did not handle missing sleep as well as he did. She had still been rather tired-looking lately, but he had thought that she had been trending towards being on the mend the past couple weeks.

Apart from that, as he was looking down at her, his eyes distractedly trailing towards her lower half, while he was thankful that he at least now knew that she was in fact wearing a pair of frilly-looking shorts, the sight made his head jerk back up to face the headboard with nearly enough force to crack his neck, very grateful for the dark of the room.

"Freya," he said slowly, quite at his wits' end for this, "surely whatever it is you're talking about would make more sense in the morning, yes?" The only response was that she snuggled herself into a tighter ball, making him notice the curve of her hip and then dodge his eyes away from noticing it. "You really—you can't be here, so—"

"Severus," she said with a deep, fed up sigh, "go—to— _sleep._ "

Of all the things that would have helped him sleep, being forcibly pushed down onto his own bed might have been near the right direction, but as it turned out, landed him entirely on the opposite end of anything close.

In fluid motion, she had reached a hand up to his chest and used her weight as she propped herself up to send his back slamming into the soft mattress, and as much as he would have certainly put up a fuss about this in any other position, he found that quite impossible to do in this one; frozen in place, flat on his back as he was, staring up at her with the heat of her palm coming clear through the thin fabric of his shirt and her hair falling into place around him, so that he was encased within a tiny world that consisted only of her.

Dark gold eyes stared down at him, and he had the odd sensation of forgetting how to swallow.

On the other hand, or rather her own, she looked like the effort of this movement had cost her, and after no more than a single slow and hazy blink down at him, teetering dangerously from her precarious position, she nearly nodded her face straight into his, making him flinch out of his immobility to catch hold of her arms even as her head snapped back up on its own.

"Why don't _you_ sleep?" he said with irritation, still keeping his head turned away in case she went fully unconscious next. But he felt her arms moving in his grip, and watched in dismay as she only strengthened her pose, placing both of her hands on either side of him and glaring down in determination—or as much as she could muster, which was looking like very little.

"No," she said slowly, " _you_."

He scoffed at her complete lack of reasoning, giving her an up and down look to disparage her extreme display, but this only made him fully take in exactly how it looked to have her leaning over him. Whatever his protests had been, he promptly forgot them, and the only noise his throat could make now was an odd coughing sound. Thankfully she was not fully on top of him, but her knee was still at his hip, and, more to the point, looking down provided a picture of only her loose shirt and bare legs. All he had now for protection was the blanket still over his lower half, and as he realized being in any kind of contact with her in this pose was a mistake, he quickly tried to simultaneously let go of her arms and push her off him at the same time, which proved to be quite the difficult task.

Leaving her limbs unattended may not have been the best choice, however. His eyes locked back into place on hers as her face came down closer, her weight shifting to one arm as the other brought her hand up to his face. He was trapped again, mesmerized into merely watching as, with great care, his hair that had fallen haphazardly when she pushed him down was smoothed at the side by a gentle brushing of fingers, much as he had done to her once before. But he had never meant anything on the level he was feeling from this motion, his heart beating faster than his mind could think.

"You have to," she whispered, getting ever nearer to him so that he scarcely dared to breathe.

And then, the breath came out of him all at once as he realized she was tipping forward in a very different way and turned his head at the last second, his hands breaking free from his momentary lapse in judgement to correctly react, catching her before she smashed her forehead into his face for the second time as she collapsed in a tired heap.

" _No— Don't—_ "

He didn't know what he was saying, or really what he was doing, because it seemed as if he was trying to push an immovable object off of him, his hands not quite able to put any strength behind the movement—possibly having something to do with the fact that he was finding the feeling of having a very soft, very warm weight on his chest not at all unpleasant. He mouthed wordlessly, feeling a flush of heat radiate out over his whole body as his panic grew to a boiling point, before finally, with a great huff and steeling of limbs, he gave up.

His expression towards the ceiling was pained and he was vaguely aware that his foot was twitching, but he remained otherwise locked in place, wondering what on earth he had done to deserve this special kind of torment. He could feel her breath—so much calmer and slower than his own, though he was trying his best to control it—blowing just below his neck, where she was facing with her cheek on his shoulder, possibly asleep for all he knew.

He tried—honestly, earnestly—to mentally slap his brain into working with him on this, to muster some semblance of calm and orderly thinking and make his limbs move, or even just his mouth; perhaps to deliver a politely worded request that he agreed, he should go to sleep, and would very much like to do that now, alone, without any of her very kind but most unnecessary help. There wasn't really anything for it though, not when a much less polite, much more greedy part of him was warmly glowing in his chest, wanting to hold her tighter to it and not let go till morning, telling him to just believe the lie that it was a dream and that he was free to relax, to just enjoy it.

He may have gotten this wish granted, as when she took in a deep breath, he not only felt her press into him as her lungs filled, but with her next exhale she whispered such a soothing singular word that the notion of keeping up the fight vanished from his mind.

" _Sleep_..."

His whole body seemed to relax with just one sigh. His breathing finally slowed to match hers. Even his mind quieted down at once and he could think again, though now with a pleasant hum underneath everything, canceling out the otherwise cold, unfriendly sounds of the stone castle walls. The modest dungeon bedchamber had never felt so cozy.

With relaxation came the obvious understanding, clearly, up to the forefront of his mind, that it was the magic behind her voice orchestrating things. He couldn't really complain at being calmed down through magic though; he had definitely needed it. With his nerves settled, maybe he could chance speaking up without sounding like a crazed fool. There was one item in particular that needed to be dealt with first and foremost.

"Could you... perhaps... get off me?"

He glanced down as she lifted her head, squinting at him in sleepy annoyance. He thought she might protest, but after a second, she shifted away, rolling onto her side—and trapping his arm with her, now replaced as her pillow as she nestled close by, but no longer touching the rest of him. Well, that would have to be good enough.

Onto the next order of business. "And, would you mind explaining, finally, what it is you're doing here?"

"Keeping my word," she said, her eyes remaining shut as far as he could tell from his view of just the tops of her lashes. She didn't appear the least bit ashamed to still be speaking in such bizarre riddles, and he was regaining his ability to be annoyed. With a slight twitch of his arm, he nudged her, as if to shake loose more explanation, and was thankfully rewarded. "I promised," she went on, just a bit muffled, "that I'll always sing to you, so you can have your dream."

He stared at her in stunned silence, blinking. "You... what?" His racing mind cut through the calm it had been enjoying as it collected all the pieces to this forming puzzle, somehow even more thrown by the bald truth than if she had simply said something nonsensical instead. "When? When did you promise that?"

But he already knew, even as her head lifted up to him. She didn't bother answering, their shared quiet gaze conveying enough. When she spoke, it was with a quiet sigh, her eyes closing once more. "My diary said it was important, especially since I'd been skipping days before..."

As he thought this over more, his brows slowly began to furrow. He remembered her being so fussy about him taking potions for dreamless sleep during the first week of school. "So, you've just been... invading my privacy like this ever since?"

"No," she said with offense, looking up. "That month after—... afterward... well, I only saw you that one night at the inn. And then when you came here to teach... I wouldn't bother you outside of the castle, but here..." Her hand moved to point behind her back, about two feet off from the correct angle that would have led his gaze straight to the lone window, though he made the connection anyway. "The house elves know when you're asleep. And I don't come in."

"But..." The words momentarily escaped him, feeling as if he was still missing something from the vast passage of months his sleepy mind was trying to go over. Even viewing it from her perspective, where she may think it a serious binding commitment from a man so on the brink of death that he only remembered making such a request in his dreams—well, he was well enough alive nowadays, thanks to her. "You don't have to do that."

"You sleep better when I do, though."

His eyes glanced to the side at her still face and he watched as her mouth eventually fell back open, the formation of the words seeming to take her a sluggish second to get around to.

"Less grumpy."

His eyes averted back to the ceiling, away from the soft smile on her lips, his own flattening to a thin line as he felt a defiant bout of grumpiness coming on.

As he sifted through his recollections of all the times that they had been apart, either with her outside of the castle or him gone from it, it was difficult to argue that he slept more soundly when he was dreaming of phoenix song and his last bittersweet—though false—memory. It was more than a bit unnerving, however, that she apparently knew about this dream. His immediate bad faith analysis that she was lying and secretly peering into his mind whenever she wished had to be set aside though, in part because it seemed as if she followed a decently strict ruleset on this matter, and also to avoid descending his mind into another spiral of panicking about just what she would have learned if she had. Better to wait till morning for those happy thoughts.

One thing was for certain, though.

"Well," he said, "you can consider this me formally relieving you of your duty." Her head poked back up, her expression this time showing a muddled frown, to which he tried to address as politely as he could. "I don't know why you would ever think it was so important in the first place, but I do not need you to—wh— _wait—_ "

" _Shut_ ," she said, very near to his ear as she cozied right back up to his side, " _up_. Too many words. Essays all day. Vampires..."

"How—how is that my fault?" he said with resistance, feeling once again like he was being subjected to undue cruel and unusual punishment as her arm wrapped over his chest, hugging him in place. She might very well have been the one out for his blood. Her face had nestled into the crook of his neck and shoulder, creating a nice little padded alcove for her voice to reverberate almost tangibly into his ear, making his shoulder hunch up uncomfortably as if he could fight off the sensation.

" _Shh... sleep..._ "

A small shudder passed through his spine, but it was only from her breath on his neck—at first, and then the familiar melancholic note budded gradually into his mind, and he was shaking his head as if to clear it away.

"Not that." If he was being forced to succumb to a musical sleep—and, at this point, he would take whatever exit from this scenario he could get, including what he hoped would be instant unconsciousness—he at least wanted his say to be taken into account.

The chord abruptly ended. He listened to her gentle breathing, feeling it against his skin, as he blinked up at the ceiling. He was actually feeling quite exhausted now, and quite running out of things to distract his mind from acknowledging why it was that she felt so soft pressed up against him, contemplating how distinct the difference was from that of a mere hug. He tried to focus on counting the stone bricks up above, tracing the lines with his eyes until they ran dry of moonlight and he could see no further. As the time extended, he found he was growing used to his new sleeping situation—which was even more worrying. He was snug and warm, held and comforted. And that was just unacceptably all too pleasant. It didn't help that he had no idea if he was allowed to move even an inch, his arm stuck out awkwardly to the side to avoid touching her.

When he thought that surely she had fallen asleep, a sigh built up in her otherwise rhythmic breathing, and then he heard, and felt within him, a less familiar note of music; that pure and calming one that had set his mind at ease moments ago. He blinked once, his eyelids suddenly thick and heavy, and then, with a final thought to marvel at the strength of phoenix song, without a doubt worthy of all the glorifying passages written into books on it, he was asleep in an instant.

That night, he did not dream of any painful memories, but only of a blurry, wondrous place that he held no recollection of in the morning.

Waking from this peace, however, was arguably a different kind of painful.

His room seemed too bright against his eyelids. He was used to the faintest grey light decrying that it was morning, his tiny window not providing much to begin with, but now there was an odd annoyance keeping his eyes shut tight. Peeking them open the smallest crack didn't provide much information beyond a blinding red, making him feel as if he had stared into the sun and turn his face deeper into his silky pillowcase to escape it.

As he did so, his arms folded in automatically to pull the covers closer—except, for some reason his blankets were in a solid mass, already against him. They were still plenty soft, however, so he thought nothing more of it.

He tried again to open his eyes, realizing there was some sort of delicious scent in the morning air, almost reminding him of a homey breakfast with honey and fragrant tea, enticing him that waking from his peaceful slumber would be worth it.

What was in front of his eyes when he opened them didn't make any sense though, and he craned his neck back to get a fuller image, blinking with drowsy interest.

And then all of a sudden, he sprang up.

Or, as much as he could. From his new perspective, propped up on his elbow, he stared down, dumbfounded to find that there was someone sleeping atop his arm. There was _Freya_ sleeping atop his arm—in his bed—under his blankets. Not at all where he hazily recalled leaving her.

Alarm shot through his still half-asleep self, so that he was looking all around, agog, but his brain was unable to pull up what plan of action was required in this sort of emergency. Several thoughts were vying for attention all at once, in particular that it was far too light out and he should be worriedly checking the time, but his clock was behind him and he didn't have the freedom of both arms to wrench around—and, abruptly much more worrying, he in fact couldn't see where his other arm was.

He jerked it towards him, noticing as it moved under the blanket, and realizing with relief that it was just at her hip, patting at what must have been the waistband of her shorts to doublecheck. Only—that was actually just as terrifying—and he quickly yanked his hand fully out into view.

If he had been more awake to make decisions, he might have tried to make a little less commotion, but, as it was, he looked down in further startled dismay as Freya rolled over with a small bothered noise. It wasn't until she was already blinking her eyes open that he had the brilliant realization that he probably could have chosen to not be staring down directly over her when this happened. Though, aside from the paralyzing horror, he rather thought he would have chosen to stay right where he was given every possible opportunity.

It was a dreadfully beautiful sight to see her brush the untidy hair from her face to gaze up at him with eyes that caught the golden light of the morning and seemed pure enough to put the most spectacular sunrise to shame. Even the bleary vague look on her face held an obnoxious charm over him. And the display of her widening eyes as they took in his frozen form overtop her wasn't that bad either.

"Severus...?"

He got out a very enlightened " _uhm_ " before she seemed to realize she was not dreaming and scrambled backward away from him, throwing off the sheets. The look of sheer alarm in her sparked his mouth to be more legible. "I— I didn't do anything—"

Well, given that he hadn't even gotten out of bed yet, he wasn't quite up to wordsmith quality, but he might have better chosen something that wouldn't have made her blush quite so red, nor drop her jaw with such indignation.

Before he could deliver any more thunderingly confidence-inducing lines, her hand had twitched up to her side, and in a snap and a burst of flame, she was gone entirely.

He stared in suspended turmoil at the spot on the bed she had just occupied.

And then his head was hitting the pillow so hard the mattress bounced beneath his weight. He flopped over so that he was facedown, seeking to bury himself in the thick bedding and, if luck held, hopefully suffocate back into unconsciousness.

Not more than three seconds later though, he was heaving himself back up, having found the unmistakable scent of her perfume permeated all throughout the pillow. Agitated beyond what should be legal for morning hours, he threw himself off the bed, snatched up his wand without even looking, and pointed it over his shoulder to compile all of the bedding onto the floor as he walked on unsteady legs towards the bathroom. His newly gifted clothes he could understand, having sat in her wardrobe waiting for Christmas and soaking up the smell of her, and they had since already faded to a familiar muted nothing, but where he laid his head at to sleep at night was far too close to be surrounded by the intoxicating thought of her.

His shirt went next, as it too undoubtedly would carry the same scent having been part of the meager barrier between them last night. He had no idea when she had gotten under the blankets, or when he had wrapped himself around her tight enough so that he now could almost feel his chest ache, missing something warm against it, but both of these thoughts, combined with what he had just said to her playing on repeat in his mind, had him squeezing his eyes shut tight in a groggy grimace. It was too cold in the tiled bathroom to risk undressing fully just yet, so after he had irritably cranked the tap to draw a bath, he stood there shifting about in a small circle with his thoughts, relieved that at least all the baths in the castle had been enchanted to fill with haste.

It was madness, truly. He was losing it. There must be some mind-numbing aftereffect of her song that had been slowly poisoning his brains into a useless soup for months.

The simpler answer, that she was just rather unavoidably beautiful, and he was a useless babbling troll-brain, was a lot harder a truth to swallow.

But why should that matter, honestly? There were pretty people all over the world, to borrow her own flippant tone. It wasn't as if he had never experienced attraction before. It had gone over about exactly the same, sure, but he should be building up a tolerance against it by now. It was perfectly normal. It was fine, in fact. He could conduct himself in proper order while still fancying someone. There was no need to go to pieces about it. He could boldly and conclusively state that, yes, Freya was very pretty—and have it mean nothing more than that. He could think about the first night of December last year and acknowledge that he was just a man who, on occasion, enjoyed the company of an attractive woman—and it was just that cut and dry. He could even entertain the thought that, yes, it would indeed have been very nice to play out the scene just now in a different way—waking up to gaze down at her lovely appearance, reacting to her saying his name by instead putting his hand back to her waist, pulling her close, and kissing her without a care in the world—he could have been the one to whisper in her ear and cause her to blush for all the right reasons—he could have simply just been happy to hold her, all to himself, both sprawled out on his bed in the warm light of morning...

The bathtub he was staring unseeingly towards didn't come back into focus until he realized it was overflowing. Snapping back to the waking world to shut it off, he shook his head and coughed uncomfortably, glancing around although he was very much alone.

When at last he dunked himself unceremoniously into the tub, it was with hopes to somehow scrub out his mind as well; but, moments later, as he was dragging the last of the water from his hair with a lazy flick of his wand over the sink, he still had less than a clue of what to do.

If only she were a murderous Dark wizard that would take pleasure in torturing him should he let his guard down for even half a second—then she would be easier to talk to. The pressure of certain horrible death was a faster way to sort one's mind out than this, and he would have readily welcomed the ease with which he could have categorized all his thoughts about her into neat little sensical portions.

His face stayed pressed into his palms for a moment longer than was needed to wipe the last of the drops of water from it, until he was leaning with his elbows on the sink to hold himself in place. His skin was hot and dewy, and it felt good to steam-clean his head a moment longer.

It was enough. It was more than enough just being around her and having his private thoughts. There was no need for him to go opening up his lately unreliable mouth and saying anything that he would surely regret. He just needed to keep it that way, balanced and composed.

As he straightened up, the notion of checking in on his deeper more unhappy thoughts to see that they too were still being balanced after what he had learned last night had him frowning toward the floor. It may have to wait for now though, as he stepped out of the bathroom and wandered back, glancing at the grandfather clock—

And froze with his eyes stuck in place on where the little hour hand was pointing to.

_Brilliant, just... bloody brilliant, really._

He was hurrying up the dungeon steps into the entrance hall so fast that he nearly bowled over a student on his way, sparing only a second to cast a vicious look over his shoulder.

Not only had he missed his Sunday morning meeting with Dumbledore to go over what he had learned on his trip, but he was near to missing the staff meeting that was scheduled to come after. That wasn't even counting that he had tacked onto the list a visit to Freya to apologize, and that he had a meeting with a student later as well—and a test to plan. And other work, besides.

He was in such a foul, pressed mood by the time the staff room door came within eyesight, he didn't even hide his displeasure at finding both the headmaster and headmistress standing outside of it, talking together in soft voices that stopped abruptly as he was noticed.

"Severus, there you are," McGonagall greeted him with a stern look. "What could you have been up to so early in the day to be late?"

He opened his mouth with every intention of finally letting loose his barbed tongue he had been thus far holding all schoolyear, but was interrupted by the placating raised hand of Dumbledore.

"It's fine," he said in his calm compelling way, almost looking offhandedly pleased to have been stood around waiting on a late arrival, "I am sure he must have been quite tired after the excursion that I sent him on."

If McGonagall had previously been privy to any information regarding his whereabouts, she certainly didn't look it. Then again, he was staring at Dumbledore's serene face with just as much surprise.

With a nastily smug sense of importance growing, he turned back to McGonagall with as much of a curt grin as he could manage without revealing too much of his triumph.

She gave him a shrewd look, her eyes coming back up unimpressed. "Well—see to it that you manage your duties _here_ in a more timely manner."

They filed into the staffroom without wasting any more time, though Severus sorely wished for at least a second longer to savor having one less person think he had defrauded his way into the school, especially one of importance. He rather appreciated McGonagall—when she wasn't trying so hard to make his life more difficult. Perhaps this was the start of slowly slipping back into favor with the staff. If Dumbledore would hurry up and sprinkle in more offhand comments, it certainly wouldn't hurt.

His moment of satisfaction abruptly ended however, as he made his way into his usual corner to lurk while the headmaster gabbed to them about the latest matters of importance, and found it otherwise unoccupied. Looking around, his usual partner in shadowy wall-leaning was chatting with the Astronomy professor over by the fire. It was to be expected, as she had been making an effort as of late to rekindle the casual familiarity with her fellow coworkers, and both of them had returned to once again taking meals in the Great Hall, so their seating neighbors were her most friendly targets. Still, it put him on edge to not know what to expect given the order that things were playing out. He would have preferred to catch up to her before this.

Yet as Dumbledore strode into the center position of the room to speak, Severus watched with still attentiveness as a single head of red hair separated from the group and wound its way through towards his corner. With just a quick meeting of eyes, he diverted his gaze back to the headmaster as she wordlessly took her place beside him.

There were some uninteresting updates that he didn't quite retain the details of, followed by a much more capturing notice, as it involved the person standing beside him being informed that, if she wished to claim it, there was an especially enraged Boggart in the Ravenclaw dormitory that had been getting used in some sort of game they had invented, which had many of the staff—Freya included—tilting their heads in bewilderment and concern.

"Moving on to matters of more excitement," Dumbledore went on, "with the recent apprehension of what is thought to be some of the more dangerous individuals at large, I think it is now time to lift the temporary ban on Hogsmeade visits for the students. They can make their return this very weekend."

The headmaster didn't look his way, but Severus still felt that the pause after these words was for more than just comments from the staff, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. To his side, he caught Freya peering at him with an expression that might have rivaled McGonagall, quirking her brow at him. Her look ended in a much friendlier returned smirk of approval, however.

"That being said, please do keep in mind that it is also Valentine's Day this week," Dumbledore warned in a playfully serious tone, "so be on the lookout for any students showing ill effects from poorly concocted Love Potions, or from eating far too many Chuckling Chocolates. That will do for now."

The rest of the room began to move as one, either to chat to the person beside them or make for the door, but Severus stayed where he was to let everything die down first. He still had his missed meeting to make up for, and the person to his side to talk in private with, not sure which of these to do first—and his mind was busy contemplating other matters, besides.

On the topic of students getting themselves into too much trouble than they were worth, the term had started out for him with the delightful news that a one Mr. Wells had been thoroughly talked into submission by his mother over holiday, a fact which Severus had found out from a very curt letter waiting on his desk when he arrived back from his own holiday, stating that Mrs. Wells found her son's grades to be absolutely unacceptable and she would very much appreciate it if he was given extra attention by his Head of House to help him along, including punishments when necessary. It would normally have been completely out of bounds of what he was willing to put up with and have earned a cozy spot in his fireplace turning to ash—if not for the fact that it had been the perfect way to control his most rebellious student, holding it over his head when needed for the past month.

And, to further keep things in check, he had supplemented his extra harshness out with a little bit of a deal with Wells. Punishment for his poor behavior before holiday had of course been in swift order, and so he had barred him from quidditch practice until he improved academically. Of course, this would have been outrageously detrimental to his own Slytherin team. Good thing, then, that Wells was quite the slippery little student, and, quite unfathomably, kept sneaking out right under his nose, almost as if walking right passed him with a sly nod and a wink, to go practice at night. It was a nice deal that kept him looking like he was still being harsh and without bias, and kept Wells feeling like he was getting away with something, specifically too busy to go do anything else that might be unsavory, all while still winning back his student's favor, which only made him easier to conduct back onto the right track. He wished he had thought of it sooner than just this term, as he prided himself that it was rather genius.

And yet... he still did not quite trust the boy to be too far out of his eyesight, or any of the rest of his students. It was slightly worrying that he would be set free to Hogsmeade with his pack of friends again. He knew all too well what that additional freedom could lead to on those weekends. Not to mention, he still felt his standing with the student body was tenuous at best, and was not looking forward to the peace breaking just yet should he need to actually dole out punishments for misbehavior.

On the uplifting side, his newfound appreciation for the written word had lent him the spirit to write a letter both back to Wells' mother, and to contact his own previous Head of House for advice, though he hadn't received one back yet—possibly because he hadn't worded this request in barefaced words so much as a reluctant desperation willed onto the paper itself, and it was unlikely that Slughorn could read his mind through that alone.

He was just trying to sort out a way to perhaps rescind Wells's Hogsmeade permissions with some convoluted plan, possibly involving more letters, when a tug at his sleeve pulled him from his thoughts.

"Severus? A word?"

His eyes stayed on Freya's for a second before glancing towards Dumbledore, seeing that he was apparently busy in conversation across the room.

He nodded and followed where she led, out into a secluded hallway.

As she stopped just to the side of a tall window, spinning round on her heel to face him with her back against the castle wall, he thought he noticed a distinct lack of her usual aloof air. She tucked her hair behind her ear and then just as quickly untucked it, and she seemed much more interested in the polish on the floor than in him.

"Sorry," he said abruptly, not wanting to drag this out any longer than need be. Seeing her nervous was having a shared effect on him. "I shouldn't have—" But he wasn't entirely sure what he should not have done, just that he should be apologizing after his horrible earlier fumbled phrasing, and Freya was interrupting him with both her hands raised before he could sort it out.

"Oh—no—you don't need to apologize," she said, her eyes finally lifting, though only for a second. "I'm the one that should be sorry. I know you wouldn't— I mean, I know you're not the type to... be worried around."

This comment somehow pulled his mind in two polar opposite directions, to the effect that he was left tilting his head, both worried that he was indeed that type, and offended not to be. She let out a nervous little laugh, fiddling with her hands as she went on.

"It's just..." She paused, pursing her lips, before jumping back in at a hurried pace, "You know when you're dead tired and you don't quite act yourself; you go all loopy?"

"No. I'm always in full command of my faculties."

His set impassive stare down at her seemed to loosen up her anxious demeanor as she blinked back, holding tight an unamused smirk.

"Yes, well... would that we were all as perfectly stoic as you."

Her playful tone didn't seem to have been entirely in jest, however, as she still was having more trouble than he had ever seen with keeping her eyes up. It was enough to make him either want to step closer so that she'd have to look, or join her in admiring the tiled floor pattern; so far, he was only managing the latter, mostly because if he looked at her face, all he could remember were things that made it too awkward to be doing so.

"I'm sorry," she said again, having apparently needed to say it with more meaning, and this time their eyes did meet, "for invading your privacy like that."

He couldn't have exactly said why, but this overly laid on apology was starting to irk him. It wasn't the most tactful of reactions to curl his lip and frown—it certainly did nothing to instill confidence, making her duck her head—but the way that the possibility of him having enjoyed her company seemed absent from the equation in her mind was prickling him, as if she could have only been unwanted and invasive. Another irritating problem was that she was actually right, she should be held accountable for this, and he was annoyed with himself for forgetting that fact and at her for making him feel the need to apologize in the first place. And this shy blushing act she had going on wasn't helping.

"You should be," he said with enough force that when she looked up her brows were raised.

"...Right. Well, I am."

"Then... you understand the nightly visiting is over, correct?"

"I... Right, of course." His glare stayed held in place though, as she didn't look finished, and as expected launched back into it after a beat. "It's just—are you sure? I mean, of course I wouldn't come back inside again, but the other part; I thought it was sort of, well, your way of... I just thought that it was important—"

"It's not," he snapped, and then rethought himself, further clarifying, "I don't need you for that; so, you can cut it out."

She blinked back at him, looking to be fresh out of comments. "Alright..."

The uncomfortable silence that hung between them afterward wasn't exactly what he had intended. He now wasn't sure what he had been saying at all, in fact. The argument he had been so sure of making known looked to have made its impact though, with Freya no longer jittery. Instead, she looked vaguely stunned.

"I... have a meeting to get to," he spoke up to break the unnerving air—and hopefully get her to make a different face.

She did seem to throw off her withdrawn stare to nod her head in realization. "Oh, right, Albus was asking where you were..." She suddenly circled right back around to fully embarrassed again, tilting her head down to brush her hair out of her eyes, and giving him an unpleasant jolt as he wondered how that conversation might have gone—and how he would now have to be trying not to think about it throughout his whole meeting with the man himself. "Er... Actually, where were you? I tried finding you as well."

"Couldn't you just use your usual means to stalk me?"

"Stalk you?" she repeated with resentment. "I do not, you're just easy to find most of the time."

"Evidently not," he said, diverting his eyes and lowering his voice, "as I was right where you left me."

"Really...? Oh—you weren't showering, were you?"

His eyes snapped back to attention at her near accuracy, but he soon realized, as she stepped forward and raised a hand to his head, making him freeze, how she had drawn such a conclusion. He felt a light tug at a strand of hair beside his neck and watched as she inspected the drop of water on her fingers when she retracted them. What made his shoulders raise in defense most of all, however, was when she leaned in ever closer, then blinked up at him.

"You smell nice."

His eye twitched as he stared down in appalled silence, feeling the faintest trace of heat start high in his cheeks, and his nerves finally snapped.

"How—would you know? You're probably just smelling your own overpowering perfume since you leave it all over everything."

Her mouth popped open in wordless astonishment.

"So glad that _you_ like it," he shot in final punctuation, and turned sharply the other way, marching off on his merry way to keep his schedule.

Over his shoulder he heard her call out, loud enough that it filled the hallway before his swift exit, a singular bewildered, " _What?_ "

His meeting with Dumbledore went by in such an agitated rush that he was barely sure that he had said all he had meant to. Furthering his frustration, when he left from the tower, his path was blocked just before making it to the staircase, as standing in front of the painting of a battle fought on dragonback was an especially peeved-looking Freya, appearing to be his own sort of fiery obstacle and pulling up a memory of a similar meeting. Apparently he really was just that predictable in his paths around the castle. She didn't follow through with what was his immediate expectation of an argument however, but instead turned to fall into stride beside him with only a slightly disdainful height to her chin. She didn't seem to have anything to say about his earlier outburst, slipping into the familiar habit they used to have of ignoring whenever he snipped at her, only jumping directly into a completely different topic, throwing him quite off guard as they descended the stairs.

"So—what exactly is Valentine's Day and why has McGonagall just advised me to 'keep an eye on bushes and broom closets'?"

He would have immediately pulled out all the stops on snarky retorts had he not been so incredulous, having to first check that she wasn't pulling one over on him. Her snappish defense was that she had been a tad busy lately, what with the dying and all that, and couldn't remember every single minute detail of life all at once. He still thought she should have been more up to date on holidays given how enthusiastic she was about them, but the thought occurred to him that perhaps the very reason why, was due to these celebrations being new to her. Still, he was in no mood to be the one to explain the traditions of said date, at least not until after he had gotten a solid hour alone to himself to think and recuperate from the already hectic day. So, all she got from him were snide comments about how out of touch she was, until they parted again so that he could get the rest of his schedule finished.

Over the next couple days, he came to very much regret the decision not to cleanly inform her himself, however.

She had not entirely lost the occasional chip of frost to her tone around him at times, and he had gotten even less invites to her room than usual as of late—amounting to a total of zero, in fact. Meaning that they were both taking all of their meals now in the Great Hall, and Freya had more chatting partners with which to pepper questions. Normally he would have found it amusing to witness as she tried to ferret information out of Professor Powers while the man thought that she was asking him about tomorrow's holiday for entirely incorrect reasons, but as the first thing out of his mouth pertained to the exchanging of presents, making Freya exclaim an overenthusiastic " _Really?_ ", Severus found himself just wishing to make it through dinner listening to no more than the unintelligible murmur from the lively tables. If a giant box of chocolates showed up in his bedroom tomorrow, he was chucking them straight into a cauldron of Acid Brew.

Though the worst idea the Astronomy professor had imparted her with had been the mention of a date; " _Usually a romantic dinner_ ". The man had hastily explained, after Freya's less than receptive response (" _Oh..._ "), that of course plenty of people without romantic interests went out as friends to simply enjoy the festivities as well (" _Oh!_ "). She had seemed to finally remember talking over people at the dinner table was rude, and had adjusted in her seat to cut Powers off from view again, looking directly at Severus—and he had stared fixedly at an apple on the table that looked about the right size with which to plug up her mouth before she blurted something out that would put him under a spotlight in front of the entire school; particularly McGonagall, whom he had thought had been listening to the whole conversation, and could have sworn he had felt her eyes boring into him just then. With a very wooden turn of his head, he had sharply mouthed the word " _later_ " to Freya and gone back to his meal.

Once they were alone again, in a deserted dungeon hallway as he was making a bee-line for any amount of privacy, he had a second singular word for her.

"No."

"But," Freya said, trying to keep up with his long strides, "don't you think it would be fun?"

He paused for a moment in front of a carved column, squinting as if deep in thought. Then he leveled his gaze back to her and delivered, with more drawn-out satisfaction on the word this time, "No." Far from put out, she was starting to look like she might be contemplating if he weighed too much for her to drag over the threshold of the nearest dinner place. With an inward sigh, he went on. "Why don't you run and ask Powers to take you? I'm sure he would be more than happy to have a stargazing... companion."

"I wanted you to take me."

His unpleasant baiting tone had not been echoed at all in her voice, nor anywhere on her face when he turned to look in surprise. Instead, she was doing that thing she did that he had deemed her 'open book' expression, as if inviting him to read a single sign of dishonesty in her eyes as they gazed up at him. He didn't remember her ever having looked quite so imploring before though, blinking at him with such bare sincerity, and he almost thought her lower lip looked to be sticking out just the slightest smidge. It was altogether far too much interest for her to be showing, and left him feeling like he still had a spotlight on him regardless of the lack of audience, so that he sputtered out his reply as if he had forgotten his line in a play.

" _Why?_ "

Her brows raised, and she slowly grinned with a small shrug. "Because... the thought of spending an evening with Powers makes me want to dash my own brains out?"

Gradually, the corners of his mouth followed hers in a tight upwards curl. "Well, you might want to avoid doing that... seeing as you're already working with a lightened bag."

"How very flattering, obviously I've made the correct choice in dinner partners." He gave her a mocking look as if to indicate that if she didn't like his attitude, then perhaps she should indeed rethink it, but she only sighed and rolled her eyes. "It's just, you've been a bit..." Her gaze didn't return to him, instead searching in the distance. "...odd—lately, and I think it would be nice to do something... well, nice. But if you really don't want to, I guess I can't exactly drag you along."

He wondered if he had been right about her earlier look and she must have determined he was in fact too heavy to physically pull. More seriously, he didn't have any clever remarks to make when she was speaking truth like this. He had been even more jittery and quick to temper for no good reason lately, even falling back into sniping at her as he had earlier in the schoolyear, and he couldn't seem to break the habit even when he purposefully tried. As much as he still wanted to keep her at arm's length, he didn't want for it to be by making himself out to be unbearable. Plus, he was finding himself rather unbearable as well. Being constantly at odds with himself, whether around her or alone, was becoming a large sap to his mood.

Perhaps it would be good, a test of sorts to iron out once and for all his uneasiness around her. He had been wracking his brains for just such a way to do so the past few days, and this had his more desperate ideas of willingly giving himself memory loss, or perhaps adjusting his vision to be slightly worse, beat by a good margin. He did always work best when thrown into high pressure situations. What could be a more determining trial than if he could play it cool out to a café with her on Valentine's Day of all things?

It was just coincidence that going along with this was also precisely what he wanted to do, though perhaps under more ideal conditions. He missed having their private meals together, and in the interest of not being trapped in a continual loop of being a total git, it might be a nice gesture for both of them.

It was much easier to deal with in the framing of being dragged into it though.

"Alright." Contrary to appearing to understand his confirmation, Freya looked up at him in complete surprise as he stepped toward her, until he was staring down with the same intense determination that she usually turned on him. "I'll take you."

There was a light dusting of snowflakes flurrying down only to melt on the grounds, putting just enough of a chill into the evening air to require bundling up should one plan to be outside for long.

_This is good. This will be a good thing_ , he assured himself as he stood out at the bottom of the stone steps up to the castle, hands in the warm pockets of his robes underneath his cloak. _A '_ nice _' thing._

A handful of students plodding along the path from the greenhouses, making their way after the last class of the day, glanced at the clenched and menacing expression of their Potion's professor and quickly hastened passed.

The deep and slow sigh he exhaled sent out a continuous cloud of condensation.

There was still time to back out; it wouldn't be the end of the world for them to turn right around once she showed up and head back into the Great Hall for a normal dinner and evening. There were enough decorations in the castle to count as still celebrating the festivities, which seemed to be what Freya was after most. She kept referring to ' _the atmosphere_ ' and ' _how quaint Hogsmeade is_ '; while all he could think was that if even one person mistakenly called them a couple, he was going to make her walk fifteen feet apart from him. About the only upside he could name now was that at least they wouldn't be in front of the whole school if he embarrassed himself, the students not scheduled to be released upon the town until tomorrow.

As the sound of the oak front doors opening had him turning around expectantly, he had the bracing impact of the first thing he saw providing a different reason for him to want to walk separate from her, with the hem of her robes taken up an inch and ankle boots to show as much of her candy floss pink socks with little mobile threaded cupids chasing after flying hearts on them. He couldn't decide between nauseatingly kitsch—or cursed with Dark magic. Maybe she was possessed, and he would have to call the whole thing off to have her examined.

"Like them?" she said with a bright smile as she reached the final step to his level and his eyes were finally peeled away with a last blink to hopefully clear the horrid image. His gaze lingered only a second longer, on his old Slytherin scarf around her neck and overtop her hair, before facing back down the path and starting forward, wanting to get on their way.

"I'm more curious how you managed time to... craft them," he said carefully, imagining the socks could have only been created on the night of a new moon using actual hearts from some terrible creature, "on such short notice."

"Borrowed from Albus," she said, and then added after misinterpreting his sideways glance of disapproval, "I did have to shrink them a bit."

He only gave her a continued stern look in response before the path grew too slippery in places for his gaze to be anywhere else, and they settled into a would-be comfortable silence on their trek—unfortunately, he was far from comfortable today.

"How were your classes?" he asked, and then immediately gave himself a mental thumping for bringing up work immediately, as if this wasn't all they talked about every day.

"Fine," she said mildly, and then continued with a weary sigh, "I had mostly first-years today though. So it was nice to have this to look forward to."

He met her warm grin with only a sideways peek and a very short returned one of his own, quickly diverting the subject safely back to work after all. "Did you have your veela-believer, then?"

"Stop," she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, though she was grinning. "He doesn't deserve you making fun of him constantly, it isn't hurting anything to believe his cousin or whoever is part magical being."

"Apart from his future test scores."

"How do you know that he's wrong? There could be some... distant veela relatives," she said without much conviction, shrugging her shoulders.

He scoffed, glancing further down the path through the trees as they rounded the corner to check that no one else was around, saying absently, "The only one even remotely resembling a veela around here is you."

"What? In what way?" But his casual grin had become a tight-lipped line, and he kept his gaze straight ahead even as she leaned in to look him in the face. "In what way, Severus?"

He might be able to admit it to himself that she was beautiful, but he wasn't about to go blurting anything so bold out loud. So, he found himself, as they continued on to Hogsmeade and eventually crossing onto the main street, going on far too long of an in-depth explanation about hair, wand core usage, and shapeshifting abilities, until he was positive that he had talked himself a good six feet into the ground, and Freya was squinting at him in silence, not offering him any help out of this hole. In fact, when she spoke up, she only seemed to push him down further.

"Except veela are all women," she said skeptically as they turned on their path, "and phoenixes aren't."

"Well, perhaps if you were to share more details about them, then I could be more informed about such things," he countered. Most of his intent was just to steer the conversation in any other direction, but he did hold his gaze on her for an added second, eyebrows raised, to see if she would indeed divulge more. It had been some time since she had first been secretive about the life of phoenixes besides herself, and he assumed things had changed since then, even despite that her eyes looked to be narrowed now for more than just one reason.

She fell silent for a moment to gaze around at the town's decorated streets, dotted with overflowing planters of huge varied flowers in red and pink, and streetlamps just beginning to come on, small flames flickering to life seemingly automatically, adding a warm cast to the otherwise grey wintery scene as he led the way further on.

Finally, she said, "Well, I'm sure you already know of one other phoenix; he's with the New Zealand quidditch team."

" _That?_ " he said, turning to her in disbelief. "The mascot is a real phoenix? I always thought they had dressed up a parrot."

"No," she laughed, "he's very real. Trust me, we think he's a loon for going along with it, too."

"Is that how you choose to immortalize him in your notes of people to remember? 'Quidditch loon'?"

"Huh?" She gave him a quizzical look, having to tilt her head an extra inch as she looked to the side while walking. "Why would I have him written down—?" Realization smoothed her expression and she looked away just as he caught up to speed with what he had wrongly assumed, diverting his gaze back ahead as well.

Of course. Why would phoenixes forget each other? That would make things so much more complicated for their relationships, and wouldn't that just be such a shame...

Overtop his silence caused by the sudden dull pit in his stomach, Freya continued on in a nervous babble, "I met him once, actually. He said they used to give him firewhisky before big matches as entertainment for the crowd, but then they got in trouble for care violations with some Magical Creature Departments and they had to stop. So... you know, it's nice that I'm not the biggest embarrassment to us... Oh, look!"

His sullen stare followed to where she was pointing and his brooding thoughts about some flamboyant sporty idiot having a more solid history with her than him was promptly evaporated by the picture before him. Across the street there was a café that he recognized as having always been painted in a light pink stucco all year round, but now had so many additional decorations to its shopfront that his eyes hardly knew which garish thing to look at first. The whole scene was just a bright red and pink assault on the eyes, and they had even tied enormous bows on the lamp posts directly out front. The large windows showed a clear view into a table where a couple was sitting marveling at a fat golden turtledove flying around their heads, sprinkling some sort of confetti, before abruptly bursting into a large pile of it and leaving a floating sparkling heart in its wake. The couple stopped clapping as they looked down at their ruined meal, now covered in exploded bird confetti.

He turned in a stiff motion towards Freya, who thankfully also had her jaw hanging in utter disgust, and peered back up at him to exchange a look.

"You've... got somewhere else planned, haven't you?" she said tentatively.

He had half a mind to point out that she was the one wearing socks that matched the place perfectly, so he wasn't sure what she was put off about it, but he was in too much of a hurry to drag her away before she started to get curious about two more twittering golden turtledoves flying out to greet a new couple that had just walked up to the front doors.

After a short ways more, they made it to his chosen destination and he nodded towards a much more subdued-looking corner café, its aged dark wood architecture blending in with the rest of the street.

"Here."

Though it was advertising a special menu for Valentine's Day in the window, there was no obnoxious greeting as they entered, and he directed them in a quick line towards a tiny table in a back corner. To his relief, Freya seemed taken with his pick, looking around at everything with a pleasant smile and walking close by to ask if he had come here as a student. He shook his head, explaining that this had just been a spot Slughorn used to meet with him during his mentorship. He didn't say out loud that his student pocket change wouldn't have stretched through even the front door. The place was different from when he and Slughorn used to visit though, the furniture switched out to some spindly woven wrought iron, and he didn't realize until his legs were already hidden under the draping white tablecloth just how little room there was, having to awkwardly apologize and maneuver until they had sorted themselves out to both fit without touching.

"Well, at least it's quieter," he said once he had situated himself to face in towards the wall, not as glad on this visit that his usual spot, which had been originally chosen to always have a full view of the room, now just put multiple happy couples enjoying their time together within his sights. Meanwhile, Freya was facing out and staring at a painting on the wall behind him. "And it has more taste."

As soon as he finished talking, his attention was drawn by a small silver sparrow fluttering to the edge of the table to deliver a menu scrawled in curly lettering. It held both of their silent stares until Freya broke hers with a bright grin.

"Yes, silver is much more elegant, don't you think?"

He delivered a sour expression back at her, angling his face away from the intrusive third table member as if ignoring it could make it disappear, even as it twittered helpfully.

"Don't encourage it," he said as she wiggled her finger when taking one of its offers, "I'd prefer to read the menu, not hear it in song." And if it blew even a speck of confetti at him, he would be taking out his wand.

"Aw, I think it's cute. Almost like a Patronus, but not bright enough, and the edges of its form aren't quite opaque..." He watched as she leaned in on an elbow for this studious assessment—and then quickly took it off to sit more politely. He gave the bird his attention again only to check her observations for himself.

"If someone was using a Patronus to wait tables, I would rethink my choice of café." Carefully, he slid the second menu away from its little hopping feet, testing if it would leave finally. It did not, and he glared at it, asking Freya offhandedly without turning from his adversary, "Are you teaching the Patronus Charm? It wasn't in the curriculum when I was a student." A fact which he had thought preposterous given the times, and so he had taken to self-study to learn it.

"And it still isn't," she replied, twirling her own menu around on the table. "Not by Ministry standard, anyway; I must have thought it was at least important to go over it in written form though, because it is in fact in my notes."

He paused, realizing he had fallen right back into talking about work, but feeling the urge to ask more. It wasn't exactly favorable that it might be a bit argumentative for a dinner conversation, but getting to help her with classes in depth the past couple months had only rekindled his desire to get to teach the subject himself, and so he found it difficult to stop now that he had started. As Freya took notice of him staring at her intently while he decided, she raised her brows and then leaned in as if she could feel what he was after, the corners of her lips perking up in encouragement.

At once, he leaned in as well. "What do your notes say about the most effective way to summon a Patronus?"

She instantly fell back against her chair, rolling her eyes. "Oh no, not another lecture—don't you get enough time to be the smartest person in the room during classes?"

He held his ground with a self-satisfied grin. "No."

"This isn't like the werewolves one, is it? Because I looked into it, and I still say you were only right in theory—"

"No, I'm factually correct about it—"

"In _theory_! In practice, in a planned lesson," she emphasized, slapping her palm with the back of her hand, "I'd rather teach what's been researched; so, unless you're going to go publish a paper—" He made a face at the very thought, as she seemed to know he would, letting this hang in the air like a threat with an expression that said 'there you are, then'.

The silver bird still sitting at the edge of the table absorbed their beat of silence, its head flicking back and forth several times before Freya finally straightened back up with a sheepish clearing of her throat.

"Well—are you going to tell me what this best method is, or not?"

His cool grin returned, and he made her wait another moment as he took his time before speaking.

It was nice whenever he could argue with her in a productive way, not only because he quite enjoyed getting to show off a bit in front of her, but because it lent to a feeling of security knowing that they were close enough to heatedly disagree without her smile being absent by the end of it.

The considered point that he was trying to make was that all the books he could find at the time while studying the spell on his own had gone on about focusing on a happy thought, which had yielded him only poor results. Luckily, though, he had eventually found a solution, discovering that it was much easier to simply practice control over one's fears, keeping a clear mind and focusing only on the necessity of the spell in a situation, which he had already been studying anyway. Freya didn't seem as impressed with this explanation as he might have hoped, arguing that it sounded more like he had just created a more difficult obstacle for himself, and that it wouldn't be easier for most people. They wound up spiraling off course to bicker about the complexities of emotional meaning behind spell purposefulness, archaic forms of words versus current understandings, and veering even further into territory of whether individual perceptions of the world and oneself played a part in magic, to the effect that by the time they had ordered and received their drinks, the waitress who handed them off gave them both a tightlipped look and hurried away, presumably thinking that they were having a different sort of disagreement. Their tone took a turn after that, but it was mainly due to the fact that trying to speak with authority over the tops of mugs filled with far too many frills and garnishes proved to make them both feel silly. Freya's drink of spiced hot cocoa, with what seemed like endlessly frothing whipped cream that kept changing around into different shapes, between hearts and especially bubbly handwriting, was also more than a bit distracting as she tried without success to stir it together.

The break in their conversation opened up to a lighter—though by him, not exactly more welcome—topic, wherein they both took a stab at guessing the other's Patronus form, spurred on by the fact that he shortly declined to answer when she asked directly. He let her guess through 'owl,' 'bat,' 'horse,' and 'adder,' but cut her off with a scowl when she hopelessly threw out 'clown fish,' turning the question around onto her. However, it only took him one confident take that she couldn't possibly have anything other than some loyal breed of companion dog before she was muttering into her cocoa that she didn't really need to cast the charm anyway, her eyes pointed out towards the room as she took a long sip, and then she changed the subject back to where they had previously left off.

"So then, do you actually even conjure a Patronus, or do you just simply decide not to be afraid and stare down dementors until they go away?" she asked with heavy sarcasm.

"I believe it's you who does that, actually," he said with a pointed look that made her frown without recognition, "and yes, I do, if necessary. My point is that there are other means, and they are beneficial for not only overall defense, but the casting of this spell."

"But how would that lend to the required happiness is my question," she mused, leaning back thoughtfully with arms crossed. "I understand you think you've found a way around it, but I still think it must actually be an emotion, or at least the perception of such, of the same—"

A trio of candles set against the wall side of their table ignited, making both of them snap their heads in the direction as if to shush an interruption in class, and share an agitated look as similar candles being lit around the room made others comment in delight at the shifted evening atmosphere to a warm romantic glow.

Unaffected, Freya took an overly deep breath for continuing shortly, "I think you're just describing what has to be your own interpretation of light, happiness, or love; there isn't another way."

His brows twitched downward just slightly. "I never said that I wasn't utilizing emotion in some capacity," he said carefully, avoiding stating which one in particular, "only that it's expressly easier to be done in a clear-headed and dutiful way."

"Perhaps..." He watched as she stared hard at the table, her spoon making a muted ringing noise as she twirled it around the edge of her half-empty drink, like a visible cog of her turning brain. "I suppose it's possible that what you're describing is actually devotion, which would be a representation of the positive force of love, but lacking the happiness from it itself; but then that would be rather dreary, wouldn't it? I can't imagine someone being able to draw the kind of power necessary from something so joyless and devoid of—"

The cheerful chatter from the rest of the café suddenly stood out as their own table fell quiet, Freya's eyes widening on him and then just as quickly darting away from his scowl, her lips shut tight. She took another long sip from her mug.

Whatever warmth was left in her drink didn't seem to add anything to the cool temperature of their little bubble, nor his voice as he finally spoke, reiterating in slower words, "I never said... that was what I was doing." Her head bobbed automatically, eyes glued to the table and the mug still stuck over her mouth, as if she surely believed his statement even more after hearing it a second time. Feeling defensive, and just a bit sour from his earlier glum thoughts, he snappishly went on, "And what about you? Do you just so happen to have some eternal phoenix soulmate, and the pair of you are simply generating happiness all the time forever?"

Seeing her nearly choke on her drink cheered him up just a bit.

"W-What? _No_ ," she said with as much disbelief as assurance.

He raised a brow. "Do you even get along with your own kind?" Judging by her avoidant gaze and silence, he felt his doubts were justified. However, this brought forth a new question with which to throw at her, and he leaned his folded arms forward to the table to speak with more privacy. "Surely it can't be true, that after a hundred years—"

" _Severus_."

She needn't have issued her warning with such alarm, as he certainly hadn't been leading anywhere that should have made her cheeks turn such a shade of pink, but even he had to drop his blamelessly steady gaze after a moment and rethink his words more carefully.

"You were the one who wanted to 'celebrate the holiday,'" he said as his defense, for the thread he was about to continue on tugging without a doubt required one, and his bitter tone would only cover so much, "so then... why don't you share your own romance stories." _Because I'm certainly not sharing mine._

Her head stayed stuck downward, but her eyes peeked up once to check if he was serious, before lowering back to her lap when he raised his brows at her. He hoped she would just get on with it, otherwise he would have nowhere to go with this, seeing as his only current viable excuse here was to be teasing her. It wouldn't do to let on just how much he was actually interested.

"Well, I... there's only really one person worth—well, at least, he's all I have written down," she stammered, making his heart involuntarily twitch despite her next words negating anything it could have been reacting to. "Actually... it's the reason I started writing years ago..."

Even though she had nearly hidden her chin in the scarf around her neck, he had caught every word with rapt attention. His eyes were no longer distracted by even her hair being wound round her finger as she mulled over her thoughts, though his mind did wander to the previous week, when they had attended another quidditch match together and she had worn similar; at the time, as they were walking away from the pitch at the end, her expression had grown to just about the same level of far-away thoughtfulness as it did now, and he had never sorted out why.

Finally, he broke the pause himself in a quiet voice. "You decided to remember... for love?"

Her head slowly came up, and then she surprised him with a sudden darkened scowl. "Are you joking? Don't make it sound so soppy; I did it out of spite so I'd never forget the bastard."

He blinked at her in dumb astonishment, remembering to pick up his chin only after a moment. "Oh." It was a few seconds longer of adjusting in his seat and quietly swallowing down his wasted excitement before he could correctly shift modes. "Then... what sort of person was he?"

"Dragon-tamer."

"What?"

Her blank gaze into the candlelight was broken as she seemed to take in that she was still engaged in conversation, and with more alert discomfort to this fact, repeated, "He was... a dragon-tamer. From Norway—I don't know, I suppose, he just..." She shrugged, looking harassed and eyeing him with apprehension. "You can't really want to hear about this, can you?"

He remembered at the last second, before he leaned in with interest, that he was actually not supposed to be interested, and changed up his movement to shrug right back, fixing her with a cool, unaffected stare. She squinted at him for half a second, and then seemed to be more caught up in whether or not she wanted to spill what she had to say—then, after one more glance at him to check that he was waiting and listening, she pulled herself in closer to the table, and it all appeared to finally pour out of her in a rushed whisper.

"Well, I forgot, didn't I? My Burning Day had to come sooner or later, and when I woke up, the first thing I see is him, just—some wizard— _there_ —with all these grand ideas about being together forever, and he's got it all sorted out with a neat little note from me, to myself—and he's saying he's decided—oh, _he's_ decided—that he wants to figure a way to be immortal to be with me; just needs a bit of _my_ blood and _my_ magic to do a bit of testing. So, I'm standing there, just woke up, and when I said, 'Are you perhaps completely mad?', he seems to think I'd want it the other way round, and offers to sort out a way to take _my_ magic away, make me like him—just to be with him! Have you ever heard—what a load of—just... just the absolute entitlement of it all! Asking someone to change their entire life for you!"

His eyes had been on her mug where she had moved it aside in an agitated motion to make room for her busy hands while she talked, but he raised then once she was finished. "So... I'm assuming that didn't go over well?" The tight line of his mouth tugged up at the corners as her scowl deepened from more than just the residual emotion from her story. With a knowing look, as if this was the part he would most enjoy hearing, he lowered his chin to meet her gaze. "What did you do to him?"

"Glassed him," she said without blinking, "big mess, blood everywhere. Most unfortunate, but it had to be done." His grin widened, but only in wait of her to give an actual answer. She lifted one shoulder and brushed it off. "I left, of course."

"But," he said, and his eyes stayed fixed on hers, "you did choose to remember, after all."

She appeared to diminish slightly under his focus. "Well... yeah. But only for myself." Her eyes trailed away and she slowly sighed. His attention was competing with a noisy table of six in the center of the room, momentarily making him want to cast a cursory glance all around them to make sure no one was overhearing such secrets of her life, but he couldn't pull his eyes away. He was recaptured as she quietly spoke back up. "I found out I had written down a lot more than just one note; I ended up stuffing it all into an empty book binding. I wrote down the ending to it, that he wasn't worth a single word, and I never went back. But the idea of remembering eventually still... Well, I already had a sort of journal by that point..." She picked up her cutesy mug of cocoa and swirled it around like a glass of something stronger. "That was five years ago, but it feels a lot shorter. I hardly wrote anything down back then..."

"...Do you still think of him?"

The cold slice her eyes made as they flicked towards his answered well enough, but for good measure she added, "I think about how hopefully his dragons have permanently scorched his eyebrows off, the greedy son of..." before falling back to her introspective composure.

He decided he should end his prying there and his gaze followed hers to the table, smoothing his fingers over a crease by his elbow. His curiosity might have been noticed had he gone much further, and besides, her imperious disposition didn't lend to any more openness. It was odd; as much as he associated her other form with vibrance and flashiness, there were very few times he could recall when she actually looked as regal, usually dressing herself in such muted colors and plain clothes, almost like she was trying to cover it up. The way she looked now, arms crossed and a slight frown down at her held drink, was closer to the haughty royalty he would have expected had he known her first as a phoenix.

Whichever appearance she chose to show though, he had the distinct feeling that he had been correct with his original interpretation, and that she had indeed remembered for love; not the soppy kind, but one which had ingrained a lesson. He wondered, deep within his thoughts on the truth of why it was that procuring a happy memory for him was like plucking a blossom from a tangle of Devil's Snare, if he himself was so easy to read.

Seeing as she hadn't come close earlier to guessing that, at current, he might not even know the form his Patronus would take, and that he might be just a smidge apprehensive to know, he could only assume that he wasn't.

The quiet of their table was broken up abruptly, though it wasn't just the suddenness that startled him, but rather the sharp kick to his leg. He again shuffled his feet around under the tiny table to profuse apologies from Freya; apparently she had absently tried to cross her legs to keep her foot from bouncing in annoyance. However, he found it more entertaining to refute her excuse, accusing her of trying to take out her woes on his shins. It served nicely both to bring back a lightness to the air, and to grant him the enjoyment of the return of her wide-eyed sincerity, as she fretfully tried to make her 'sorry' be believed, even as she delivered him another accidental kick in her hurry to move her own legs out of the way.

After a short pleasant meal that wasn't nearly as robust as those at Hogwarts, but was a decent change of pace for an extravagant departure from the norm, the pair of them had headed back out onto the frosty streets of Hogsmeade for a stroll, with Freya stating that she wanted more of a look at the additional decorations to the already charming little town.

They stopped by Honeydukes, as it might well have been declared a local crime not to on this day, given all the advertisement out front by the crowd of people around even at the darkened hour to get Valentine's chocolates from their favorite sweet shop. After being advised by a helpful employee that mixing Heart-melting Toffee Bars with the rest was a bad idea if one didn't want a chocolaty soup, they had left with Freya holding a pouch of various handpicked candies, sharing between them as they meandered about.

He was leading the way for the most part, just an inch ahead of her in stride and directing when they came upon corners, following what was a familiar path to him from school trips. More detailed memories of those times were brought to his mind as Freya beside him stopped and pointed.

"Ooh, what's up there? Is it open to go look over the town?"

It might have been an old mill or granary at some point in the past, but now the towering building that had interested her was an apothecary, with its very own glass-working shop attached to one side, seemingly its business companion for bottles. The apothecary portion was shaped similar to the potion etched into its wooden sign, tall and tapered upwards, and the whole building had a cobbled together wooden walkway of stairs leading over and up to a catwalk around the whole of the uppermost floor, where an out-of-use bell tower stood out against the sky, higher than the other immediate surroundings.

It did indeed look to provide a good spot for sightseeing, but Severus had turned away after one glance.

"No."

"Aw—why not?" she asked, still gazing back.

"Perhaps some other time, but not today," he said with what he hoped was enough allusion, though her blank stared proved otherwise. With a sigh, he went on, "Kids used to go up there to... It's a popular romantic spot."

"Oh!" Her face went from mild understanding—to scrunched up and peering at him side-ways. Before he could do more than pop his mouth open, she was raising her hands. "I'm not judging."

"I didn't mean _I_ did it—"

"Oh good, then you won't mind if we go up."

Before he could protest, she had grabbed him by the hand and was dragging him along towards the starting stairway at the side of the building. Despite her enthusiastic declarations that the day was about enjoying the atmosphere, and looking over the snowy lit-up village from this vantage point would surely be most poignant, he was fairly certain what they would find at the top. Sure enough, before they had even reached the end, they had run into a couple stopped on a short bridged gap, whose faces were hidden behind the witch's overly large-brimmed hat. As they awkwardly edged around each other, both pairs exchanging stiff nods, he hoped it had not been too noticeable when he had yanked his hand out of her grip at the last second, nor too noticeable to her that he had forgotten to take it back much sooner.

The view was indeed beautiful, and a unique perspective of the otherwise cozy streets closing in on either side—but it wasn't really worth running into and interrupting two more pairs of people, and after finally finding a side of the building they could stand on without crowding anyone, Freya was looking more irritated than awed.

"I did try to warn you," he said with his back against the wall, arms folded, not even bothering to peer over the railing as she was. She cast him a look over her shoulder as if to argue, but then seemed to think better of it, sighing instead.

"Alright, fine. I think that's quite enough atmosphere for me."

"You want to leave?" He thought of having to wind their way back down through the maze, and suddenly wished to stay longer.

"Well... maybe if there was somewhere more..." He watched her eyes travel off into the distance with a puzzling expression before coming back to him looking slightly guilty. "You wouldn't mind going somewhere to be alone, would you?"

"Why would I mind that?" he asked with what he thought was just a bit more alarm than he had meant to let out.

She shrugged, clasping her hands behind her back idly. "I just sort of feel bad pulling you away if you'd rather be out socializing."

He stared at her in blank disbelief until the corner of her mouth twitched, and then he let out a snort as she laughed.

"No, I don't mind," he said. "You're the sociable one."

"To an extent; I do think I prefer staying alone on the sidelines most of the time..."

She leaned her back against the railing, and as he watched, the clear elevated air swept a breeze through her hair that threatened to tug it loose from his old green and silver scarf holding it to her neck. He found that, actually, the landscape was indeed breathtaking when it framed her, capturing her soft smile in picturesque form.

"...But you're nice to be alone with."

Realizing only after he had thoroughly expended the opportunity to even so much as lamely say ' _You too_ ' with nothing but a wordless stare in return, he frowned in more than just confusion as she held her hand out to him.

"Let's get out of here—the quick way."

With only a bit of trepidation before taking her hand, as it was always risky for him to willingly engage in physical contact, especially when she always insisted on wrapping an arm around him for Apparation, they managed to dodge any more holiday enthusiasts on their departure. He wondered for a split second before the pop of flame, if anyone around would hear; or, if anyone around had happened to walk in on them just then, held together against the railing, if they would have been the ones to apologize and back away.

When he opened his eyes after the flash of warm air, he found that she had chosen a spot so secluded that it didn't even look to have a path to be called less trodden. Upon closer inspection, and with the help of his wand to alleviate the darkness somewhat, there was a barely determinable trail through the floor of pine needles and leftover snow from earlier in the season, not melting as quickly in the shadows here. She had taken them to the opposite edge of the lake, so that they were facing the castle far across the water, and where the path began sat an old worn-down bench right on the water's edge.

He was about to make a comment when his glance found her looking around with apprehension, and a more playful question came to mind.

"Not scared of your own choice, are you?"

Her face set at once, peering back at him. "No. I do hope you won't be cold though, will you?"

"Not in the slightest," he said, giving the collar of his magically insulated robes a dignified straightening.

She led the way this time, stepping in the opposite direction of the bench to face further into the evergreen forest. The trees were far enough apart that walking was easy, especially as he summoned and conducted a small orb of light to snake ahead of them at ground-level and reveal the path, but their branches were dense, dampening all the surrounding sounds and only allowing glimpses of the sky above at times. He hadn't been this far around the lake before, and the new territory was intriguing.

Once they had settled into their pace, with Freya walking pointedly close to his side, though he decided not to mention this for now, she broke the silence, nodding to him and letting her arm knock into his.

"I do good work, eh?"

He glanced down at the clasp of his cloak as if just now appraising the clothes he had been wearing for months. "Yes, I'm sure they will be a blast once spring starts." He watched her mouth indignantly fall open from the corner of his eye and smirked.

"Well... Well, I could always take the enchantment off."

"And in the fall?"

"I'll just pop it back on, then."

She stretched her mouth in a self-satisfied grin, but he thought there was a slight flaw to her plan.

"And," he said slowly, "are you going to write that down, or should I make a note to remind you myself?" This time when her mouth opened, she didn't seem to have any sort of reply. With a small sigh, he went on, carefully keeping his tone in line to not disturb the mood of the evening. "I wouldn't mind being relied on for that... if you would actually let me remind you."

It felt like an empty promise now, as her reaction of tilting her eyes away from his view was more than predictable. She hadn't brought it up herself since he had first proposed it, and he had resolved that it was still a highly dangerous idea, so his extended offer of sharing his memories of their time together the previous year had sat unused in the far back of his mind. It being dangerous didn't make him feel any less driven to follow through at some point, though.

"You don't think... that you'd get tired of it?" she asked, her eyes focused straight ahead. "I would just forget again, you know." She had apparently been going for the same casual voice he had used, but her pace through the snow had slowed, as if she was listening hard over the sound of their crunching tracks.

"Would you get tired of repeatedly enchanting my robes?"

His simple unhesitant response seemed to surprise her into turning to look at him. In the low light it was hard to make out just exactly what had crossed her features, but then her smile gradually returned, wide, and then reigned in, as if it were possible to hide it.

"Well... perhaps eventually I would," she said, her cheeriness no longer sounding forced, "but I was thinking, and there should be an easier alternative than enchanting and disenchanting."

"Such as?" he asked with an apprehensive innocence, mentally kicking down his own thoughts that he had been toying with off and on, of an idea for a more sustainable transference of her memories; it didn't seem like a very good idea to bring up after what he had listened to her rant about over dinner.

She cast him a sly grin. "Such as... simply getting you a second set of robes. But I don't want to spoil this year's gifts."

The trees echoed back her laughter as he sighed heavily, rolling his eyes up to their tops.

"Great. I'll never be free from gift exchanges, will I?"

"That's sort of the thing about holidays, they happen each year," she said as if already looking forward to Christmas. "I'll give you a hint of something easy to get me if you'd like."

Begrudgingly playing along, he peered at her as she stopped. But when she held out her ankle, his eyes once again went straight to the sky, before even getting a good second look at her glaringly pink socks.

They walked on through the wood in pleasant silence, taking a curving path that he thought might be diverting them in a wide loop back towards where they had started.

Getting to hear her easy laughter again after the past few moody days felt very nearly restorative. Even his anxieties that today could have gone much worse were loosened. Thus far, he thought he had avoided doing any damage to either her ego, or to his. Though he would have preferred to do a bit better than simply tolerable, it wasn't as if he would have paid for her meal or something; he was fairly certain it would have been a lost cause to even try. Besides, it wasn't as if either of them had ever said today would be anything more than friends going out for festivities together. For him, today had been exclusively about proving a point, both to her, and to himself, that he could treat her to a proper evening while enjoying her company without tripping all over himself. He rather thought he had made a vast improvement.

Indeed, the thought crossed his mind of how ludicrous this idea would have been to him last year, not just because he might have found out earlier how awful he was at governing himself around her, but because he had been—well—just a bit rude. Only at times, though. Such as most of them. Thinking about it, his most recent snapping felt on par with several other times he could recall, but he had never felt too much of a need to make it up to her back then. Even his last act towards her— before their fight—had been to rudely cut off her words. It was a wonder that she hadn't written him off in her journal as well.

As he remembered the scant few words that she had carelessly read aloud to him once before, words that he still guessed at the meaning of from time to time, he suddenly didn't feel as comforted. The same uncertainty he had felt at that time crept its way back into his shoulders.

She was right there, walking just at his elbow. It would be simple to ask. Glancing sideways past the edge of his curtain of hair, he found the urge for an answer outweighed his trepidation.

"Freya," he said slowly, first getting her attention, "what did you think of me before?"

He thought he could see the moon itself reflected in her widely blinking eyes. "What do you mean?"

He paused before deciding it would be easiest to be direct. "What I mean... is did you hate me?"

"Hate you?" Her frown was immediate and confused. "What—... I mean, surely the presents I got beforehand should be a clue, no?" His expression remained unconvinced, as he could think of a scenario where they had been purchased before she had decided he wasn't worth them. He didn't voice this rather creative reason out loud, but she shook her head with a quiet sigh at his silence. "No, I didn't hate you... It was just a bad time for me, and—well—I'm a bit private about some things. I suppose I understand why you would think that... But we're a bit better at talking now, though, right?"

He held her gaze as if searching just as much as she was for an answer to that. "Yes... I think so."

She gave him a warm smile, but then he recognized a change as the corners of her mouth pulled overly tight. "And," she said, "you're slightly less impossible to deal with than my journal made you out to be."

He tightened his own sardonic grimace in return to her teasing, but her comment had struck true on the target of his insecurities. She had pages and pages of just how bitter, untrusting, and spiteful he had been to her.

At another time, he might have teased her back, or even gone so far as to one-up her in bite. Tonight, however, his thoughts were full of just how lucky he was that things were now so pleasant. Which was why it mattered so much for him to not mess this up.

Rather than deflect her words, an idea set into his mind.

Before he could overthink his way out of it, he darted his hand out from under his cloak to take hold of hers, fixing her with an expression of unwavering purpose when she looked surprised at this sudden halting development. Her surprise immediately shot up to an embarrassed panic as he pulled her closer, though seemingly his steady gaze was keeping her open mouth mute. At the last second, he saw her eyes catch sight of his other hand—and then he was sure that she had uttered a startled little noise as he tugged her forward, catching her against him.

He paused a moment, appreciating how much shorter she felt up close, where her face was pressed just below his shoulder and, with his head tilted down at the snow below, he could just see his hand at her back, right where her long hair ended at her waist. He finally felt her take a sharp breath, and his other hand, still holding hers, was adjusted slightly as she fixed her grip. He lowered his face even more, so that he could speak just above her ear, keeping his voice soft and low.

"I'm sorry... for acting strange lately. And for back then."

He waited, wondering if he had perhaps made a mistake in going for a hug, either in the way of invading her personal space that she was so protective of, or because he hadn't thought of just how close her access to potentially hear his heartbeat might be. The reaction he had least expected, however, was to hear her suddenly break out in quiet laughter. His head straightened back, frowning down at her in disbelief.

"Do you— _mind_?"

Her free hand came up to cover her face as she only seemed to lose herself even more at his irritated tone, until she was practically using him more as a shield to hide against. "I'm... I'm sorry," she said in a voice stuttered with barely contained laughter, "it's just... I didn't expect you to—apologize—so seriously."

Chin raising, he stared disbelievingly into the trees and poked his tongue against teeth while he waited for her back beneath his hand to stop shaking, feeling ever more chagrined by the second. When she finally raised her head, still covering half her face with one hand, even her glowing smile didn't melt his moody stare down at her, though it did serve to get one more breathy laugh out of her.

"You didn't have to," she said, shyly blinking up at him, "but... I do appreciate it."

Very abruptly, he felt that he had made a grave error in ever willingly setting himself up to be in such proximity to her face. He narrowly diverted his eyes at the last second from looking straight to her lips, turning his head away as if an inch in angle could somehow mitigate the direct effect of staring down at her this close up. With a stiff affirmative nod, he dropped his hand from around her, and they both stepped back, each of them, he noticed, glancing at the way she brushed her hair over the side of her face, a little awkward.

It was a short walk before he again saw the bench at the shoreline, and recognized the spot they had started at, their old footprints in the snow leading off to the side. They paused together in stride, wordlessly eyeing for confirmation, before they stepped up to the old bench rather than suggest going back just yet. With a quick flick of his wand to clear off the snow, and a snap of fingers from her to dry out the wood, they cozied themselves into place. After checking with a glance her way, he even put his arm around her shoulders. Normally he might have been unwilling to risk further embarrassment, but in the moment, he had felt there wasn't a way for him to get a worse reaction unless she shoved him into the lake. It turned out he was correct to be lax with this motion though, something that she was familiar with, as she seemed perfectly happy to scoot in close to his side. As they gazed out over the still, icy lake, warm and contentedly huddled together, his hand found itself being drawn towards her hair, his chilly fingertips seeking to sink in as he absently brushed through the long, silky strands, until he became aware of just how much more she had leaned in over time, her head now resting against his shoulder.

Just when he was thinking that he might have accidentally put her to sleep, she shifted to sit up straighter, making his hand lie still on her shoulder.

"Could I ask you something?" She looked to be taking a page from his book, peeking at him sideways from behind the loose hair that hung by her eyes. "Were you acting odd because of... the other night?"

He didn't need her to clarify which night, though he could have maybe used a bit more context as to which part specifically she was trying to clear of fault. Taking a stab at remaining vague, he answered with only, "No."

"Then... you weren't mad about finding out what I had been doing?"

As he pursed his lips, he was at least glad that he hadn't taken a firm stance before knowing what she had meant, but was now frustrated that he had locked himself out of using it as an excuse for his behavior.

"I was," he said carefully, "but seeing as that's been dealt with and ended, I'm willing to move past it." _And forget it had ever happened._

She twisted her mouth to one side as she stared thoughtfully down at her knees. "Right... Well—but—I was thinking, on the topic of better communicating, and perhaps openness, that maybe if you were better informed of it happening, you would be willing to continue..." As her eyes gradually inched back over to his, her words fell short with an apologetic wince at his disapproving glare. "...Right. Not that open. Sorry."

He let her fall back into silence, turning away.

At the very least, he couldn't say that he had been any 'grumpier' than normal lately without his nightly ritual of remembrance, but he did have to admit his sleep had been feeling somehow lacking the past few days. He had been trying to chalk it up to the fact that he kept having guilty thoughts more so about her sleeping in his bed again, rather than singing him to sleep.

The truth was, though, that he was craving that forceful focus to put his mind to a restful ease.

And—that she wasn't all who he was thinking of at night.

It had felt like such an obvious choice to keep things separate; neat and orderly, each contained only within its own place in his mind. Now, as things were stretched beyond their borders, it seemed to be having the effect of unraveling things to a point of tangling him up more, rather than clearing room to breathe.

He sat in his thoughts, trying to think of some convincing thing to say on the matter that would explain it better to her so that he didn't have to leave her offered kindness completely scrapped, but all he could see down each path of conversation were more frustrating offerings of help. He was sure if he asked why she felt that it was so important, it would be some spiel about mournful reminiscing and fully feeling through one's emotions being healing or some such, which was the last thing he wanted to hear.

He wasn't sure if there even was a way to make someone like her understand. He wasn't trying to do anything close to moving on or healing.

As if to solidify some semblance of a conviction that he could hold onto, and while exerting himself to not fully drop his voice down into acidic levels as it would only ruin everything he had done today, he spoke up with deliberate slowness.

"I... understand why you were doing it." He caught sight of her head turning towards him, but he kept his eyes focused down at the water's edge, having to choose his words with care here. "But... I don't think that it was as useful as you thought."

"Oh..." She sounded just a bit confused, but overall, simply put out. "Why not?"

"Because..."

He paused, but it wasn't because he had lost what he wanted to say. The mixing of these two opposing things was proving to be as difficult as he would have imagined, with everything getting swirled together faster than his tightening chest could have predicted. Almost just to get it out of him, fling it from his mind and toss it into the lake, he forced himself to finish.

"Because... it's not necessary. I don't need a song to remember her."

He instantly regretted even so much as saying ' _her_ ,' but there was no way to take it back once it had been voiced. The indiscernible waters of the lake before them seemed to ripple hypnotically, and deeper thoughts than he ever would have liked were dredged up to the surface. It felt as if he had tossed a tiny pebble in, and the resulting splash had emptied all the water, leaving a murky alien world exposed where it should not have been.

"You... still love her?"

Even though he didn't move, the question threw him well off guard, sounding like it had come from some little voice inside his own mind. The words to deny it—to snap that he had already told her before that she had it wrong, it wasn't like that—swam through his thoughts until they were entirely dissolved, the moment for them to be said passing in silence.

His limbs felt rigid as he stayed completely still, rooted into place.

"That's... very sad."

His brow twitched, and for the first time he felt the urge to look up, drawn by the tone of her voice. When he did, it confirmed what he had heard.

He had seen her sad before, on plenty of occasions. He had seen her cry, both for utility and out of a deep reflection of the sadness of others. But even though her mouth was now pulled into a devastatingly pained smile, he saw no tears in her eyes before she quickly turned away and her face was hidden behind her falling hair.

He wanted to brush it aside, to get a better look, to know what she was thinking—but he couldn't bring himself to dare reach out.

It was sad. It was indeed very sad. And at that moment, he very much only wished to crawl inside a hole, or, barring that, at least the covers of his bed, and put himself as far away from where he could reach her as possible, not wanting to ever risk being the cause of that expression to return upon her face.

For a full week afterward, though they both seemed individually determined to go about as if very little had happened despite the long silences that frequently fell between them, he couldn't meet her eye. Even when she wasn't looking at him and he caught her staring off into the distance of her room, even though she had invited him back for evening meals, and even though he tried to discern what he thought he saw on her face, every time that her eyes went back to his, he looked away.

It was after a rough night of tossing sleep, days later, that he went down to his office to find that he had a letter, and was sucked into a distracting new occasion as he immediately recognized the handwriting and the style of envelope.

_Oh, no..._

He stared down at it, frozen in place, trying to decide on a sleep-deprived brain if he wanted to toss it into the fire, or scan it for information on what treacherous disaster to avoid in what would undoubtedly be, despite every ounce of him willing against it, the very near future.

His letter to Slughorn, which he had almost forgotten about in the midst of everything, had finally been answered; only, it had come in the form of a party invitation.

* * *

_—***—_


End file.
